Instead of mailing it out of town, I chose to surprise my little sister with this care package, since I had the opportunity to go back home this weekend. I chose the items based off of what she’s always talking to me about. While also incorporating small gifts that I know she would love. I had bought a small face moisturizer and highlighting makeup palette 
that she always tells me to grab her and send over. Along with a teddy bear I had bought as well as a rose that was hand made outside the shop for valentines day which I thought was super cute. I also had incorporated a small note I wrote telling her how much I appreciate her even though we argue and disagree all the time. When I assembled this master piece, I placed it on her bed and waited for her to get home. By the time she did I was already passed out, but I woke up to her jumping on me and giving me a big hug saying thank you! Even though I know she would never do anything like that for me, deep down I know it meant a lot to her. Hopefully , she will cherish this and not be so mean when I borrow her stuff!
Artist Conversation #2
Artist: Josh Vasquez
No Exhibition.
Media: Oils, Sculpting, Drawing
Gallery: CSULB school of art, Gatov Gallery East
Instagram:@joshyBEHR
Josh Vasquez is an abstract artist who studied in Belmont High School in Los Angeles and has loved art since as long as he can remember, since then he has came a long way. He will be graduating at the end of this semester from Cal State Long Beach from the BFA program, and also is planing to join the MFA program once he is finished. He is not a graph artist and he made that very clear, there is a big difference from his work and graffiti and that isn’t what he wants his work to resemble. He had each piece of his work named, even if the project consisted of three individual parts. Every part had a unique label which showed how valuable it was to him and you can see that right away when he begins talking about them.
Josh’s art ranges from working with paints, sketches and sculptures. However, his main focus is in oils. Right now his style has a relaxing feel to it, he uses cool tone colors that resemble a sunset you would find in Los Angeles. Its a style that he recently discovered and has not always used. Apart from that, he lays the pigments on the canvas almost in a rippled pattern, which gives it a certain texture and appearance. The art he displayed in the gallery were all done during the same time, which is why they all bounce off one another. The series took him nearly two and a half months to complete and complement each other nicely.
Chris Burden, Noah Davis and Mark Rasco are the top three favorite artists that Josh is inspired by. Each artist has their individual style that reflects in his work. For instance, he described one of the artists styles as intense and bold. He doesn’t use their ideas and he doesn’t piggy back off their work, he simply is encouraged by all three, uses their main focal point and incorporates them into one piece. Other than art, Josh writes poetry and listens to music on the side. The quote “I love the way you fall asleep” is from part of his poem that he used in his work for the very first time. I asked what the meaning was and he was hesitant on replying to the question. When he did answer, he stated that he doesn’t want people to look at his art and see what he sees, or see what the message was that he was trying to get across. He wants people to interpret it however they feel, to make his art meaningful to them and to have it connect to whoever the audience may be on a more personal level.
As far as joshs personal responses went, I felt we had a few ideas in common. The main reason the artist is here in Long Beach was because Los Angeles was all to familiar, even though he chose this new place to live and start a new chapter in his life, his work reflects his home town. Which reminded me a lot of when it was time for me to decide on where to go to school, Long beach wasn’t too far yet it was far enough for me to do my own thing. The entire interview I was amazed at how the art was so valuable to the artist himself. Yet it was open for interpretation! I know if that were my work I would have a specific answer as to what this piece meant to me and why I made it. However, this wasn’t the case and it definitely wasn’t my work. So the fact that, he allows something so special to him be something special to someone else is amazing and I really enjoyed hearing what he had to say.
The First Artist I Interviewed At CSULB
Megan Macuen is an artist who works with fiberistic material, and is a natural weaver. Her art pieces are shown in Max L. Gatov Gallery East, here at the California State University of Long Beach. Her art pieces are unknown and not one has a title or name, due to the fear of mislabeling or wanting to change the label after it has been officially named.
The artist first realized her passion for art was about ten years ago. However, She studied fashion in the beginning such as, clothing and draping but then ventured off into weaving and working with MFA fibers. This is her second semester in the masters program out of the three year fiber program here at CSULB. She has no exhibition name nor labels her work as I stated previously. She bases the pieces off of the images they appear to look like, or items she is reminded of. Megan Macuen starts a piece with no initial intension of the outcome. She simply lets her mind flow and lets her creativity take the wheel, in a very natural state. Her art has no inspiration and begins with just a step by step process of whatever she comes up with. The art she has crafted so far ,start off with pieces and materials she normally finds at thrift stores. Then, she will eventually take them apart, build on them or completley add her own twist.
Her largest piece was the most interesting, it took her a full semester to complete the project, while the other two were finished over winter. All her exhibits were extremely confusing yet gave me a feeling of wanting to learn more. Her biggest piece was a tall square structure with random parts hovering over it and hidden items underneath. However, it was all very clear to see. The other, was a satellite looking dish with jagged wooden sticks and pipes hanging out and woven into it. The last, was a long mop looking structure, very simple yet had an athletic look and domesticity. All her creations were white with subtle color added to them, which instantly set a trend of her style.
The biggest structure was my favorite, due to the interesting motivation behind it. From the bottom, it began with a net tied onto each leg and was woven like the top layer of an apple pie. Megan had first shared that the net resembled a fear she had as a child, but never really got into what that fear may be or had been. As my eyes moved upwards on the piece it ended up looking like a table top with dogs and ice creams glued to the bottom, which definatley confused me. Until, she had unraveled her story. The items placed under the table were children’s art that she has collected for years. The entire creation resembled the levels of perfection yet had the most generic look to it.
I guess the part that struck me the most was when I found out she leaves her work unnamed. I have always wondered how artists pick the certain names of their artwork, it would seem to be the finishing touch of it all. Like it would be an exciting last chance for you as the artist to get your point across. However, Megan doesn’t include that in her work, which seems bizarre. Overall, I believe I left the gallery more interested in what the artist was thinking when she began and ended the project rather than what the finishing object actually looked like. It was an amazing feeling being able to be amused by what Megan Macuems thought process was other than the art piece itself.
The Funny Classmate Convo
The third time around has been the funniest yet! During our class session I met a girl named Jackie, I learned quite a bit in the short amount of time we had together. Jackie is from Maywood, a place I’ve never ever heard of. She said thats the reaction she gets from everyone that asks her that specific question but it is a city near Compton. Her family is quite large, she has one full brother, two half siblings from her dad as well as two other siblings from her mom. She attended a private High school in east LA and hated that she had to wear uniforms. However, this is her first year at CSULB as a film major and loves it, she hopes to direct and screen write movies. I asked her how she first got into that field, and she told me it was after watching a good movie that made her feel all types of emotions. Now, she would love it for others to watch her segments and feel the exact same way. Which I thought was awesome! She still lives back home and plans to get her license because as of right now she commutes about 45 minutes everyday one way. Jackie had me cracking up the whole class time and we pretty much clicked right away, Im glad I met her.
Landscape With a Corpse
This assignment was definitely something that was hard for me to do. I am no actress, and holding a serious face was by far the hardest, throughout this assignment. I chose this topic because I feel people struggle with this daily in their every day life. It may not be something I have physically gone through, but its more to raise the awareness of it all. I staged a scene of physical abuse. The materials consisted of a little eyeshadow, hammer and red lipstick that I used as blood. My sisters had a blast teasing my hair, adding more and more makeup to my black eye and capturing the moment of the one second I remained still. In all seriousness, I didn’t mean to go at this in a legit hard core way, even though this topic is extremely rough and real for some people. Rather, I tried bringing a realistic behind the scene moment most people aren’t shown .
The 2nd time around!
For the second week of class, I got to meet another student in Art110! Her name is Norma Garcia, a super senior graduating from CSULB at semester! She is from Riverside California but realized she wanted to come to Cal State Long Beach to further her education. Norma loves the weather here and enjoys that she is so close to the beach. She has stayed in the dorms all for years and truly likes it. Norma is majoring in Journalism with a focus in Public Relations and sees her self being around the fashion aspect of it. Although, she has been interested in getting a credential for teaching. So that way she has both to fall back on just in case. A fun fact that I learned about Norma is she’s quite the dog lover, and has two of her own. One is a Maltese with straight hair and the other is a mix of a chihuahua and poodle with curly hair, exact opposites.
Our First Meet and Greet
This is Nester, and we had more in common than we thought. We were both extremely clueless on what was going on and what was needed. We discussed a lot about the confusion we had in this class. With all the assignments and web pages that go along with this course. Besides all the questions we had and clarifications we needed, I got to know a little bit about Nester during the last ten minutes of class time. This will be his third year here at CSULB and we are both taking this class as a General Ed in order to graduate. He is a Bio option in Molecular Cell Biology and Physiology and he was born in Artesia and familiar w
ith the area. We also met a girl named serene who is pictured last in the photo who helped us clarify some questions we had. Thats what the majority of our conversation consisted of, after all our questions about the upcoming assignments were answered. It was quite funny.
Plaster Casting! The 1st Assignment
Making a mold of my hand with plaster was my very first assignment. I had to say it was a lot of fun! I did go back home for the weekend and since Im from Catalina Island it should have been so simple to do this on the beach. However, instead a North eastern storm hit and the water was rough and crashing against the shore walls. Making it impossible to get the sand and wet sand that I needed. So I had to improvise! On the side of the beach there was a area for people to pack up their own sandbags , Which are used to make a barrier for properties to prevent flooding in bad weather conditions. So I did just that, then I used a bucket to pour the sand all in while placing a big thick handprint in the middle. I must admit I probably should have poured a little more water in the mixture because it did end up a little thick and dried extremely quick which made it a little hard to work with. In the end, it was super fun and something I’ve never done before and I even did my nieces hand print thats now sitting in the garden which is pretty cool.
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