Category: Passion Blog

Yanny Peters, The Plants We Played With

Typically, with this blog, I write about my favorite artists, or works of art that I have an emotional connection to. However, with this blog, I would like to take my final Passion Blog opportunity to write about the future while keeping the past in mind.

Spring is my favorite season. The stormy cloudy rain brings about the bright colors of new life, making it the most poetic and reflective time of year. Beautiful pink flowers bud on trees on Penn State’s campus, and even the weeds have an odd beauty to them.

I remember growing up, when my mother would garden, she would have me pull the weeds. She would instruct me to pull the entire root out so that the weed wouldn’t grow back the next year. However, I always had trouble distinguishing weeds from flowers and I could never seem to completely uproot the plant… I wasn’t great at gardening.

Recently, I’ve made the decision to pull my weed.

Though my roots have growth deep into the ground of my safety, I want to spread my dandelion seeds to a new, unknown place.

This summer I have made the choice to study abroad in Dublin, Ireland. This was a tough decision to make and although it was difficult to make the decision to leave my comfort zone alone, I’ve decided that it is important to uproot to discover, learn, and most importantly, grow.

Yanny Petters, The Plants We Played With, National Gallery of Ireland (2015).

The Plants We Played With is a recent artistic love of mine. I really like the sketchy style of this work and the displaced color throughout the piece, displaying childlike memories of playing with weeds. The painting seems to be pulled from a botany textbook, containing extreme attention to detail in terms of color and shape.

The piece that I have chosen to feature today is a work from the National Gallery of Ireland, which is a location that I will be visiting while taking 8 credits of Organic Chemistry abroad.

Yanny Petters is an Irish artist who creates works that are closely tied to nature by exploring detail, color, and form within the realm on an environment. Petters is fascinated by the beautiful and bizarre complexities and the resilience of weeds and nature.

Though I would like to deny it, I am growing up and taking on independence. This will be the first time that I am going on a plane by myself. This will be the first time that I have to remember the American dollar to Euro exchange rate. This piece maintains the lesion that growing up is imminent and though decisions will take me places, I will leave my roots wherever I get uprooted. Somehow, that makes the decision to leave a little less scary.

Of course, I have not completely uprooted myself from my home. I intend to grow back again from my roots where I was born, but not before leaving a part of myself in Ireland.

Passion: The Meaning of Art in Evolution.

Claude Monet Impression Sunrise 1872

Art is powerful. I think the reason why I have such a desire to love and be around art is because there is nothing I appreciate more the a snapshot of culture in a moment in time.

Claude Monet is one of the most influential artists in history. Although he is anything but underground, it is important to note that he has been widely recognized as the “Father of Impressionism” throughout history.

Small and unassuming, one may look at this work and believe that it is a first draft of an oil painting. This piece is simple. It has loose, thick strokes and bright colors. The sun stands out against the blue hue, forcing the viewer to note the  time of the day.

Some may argue that it is a little too simple to consider “fine art,” however I think that the intention behind this piece is what makes it so influential.

I admire his work because of the lack of technical detail. It takes great artistic skill to resist making a work for other people, and Claude Monet made this work for himself, not for the people of high society.

At the salons, this work was not approved to be displayed. Many wrote this work off as ridiculous and undeserving of appreciation. Monet made this piece to critique the construction of artistic norms and the creation of values in art. The point was to create divide surrounding those who viewed art for the purpose of processing and communicating emotion and those who viewed art as a skill.

Those who called this artwork a disgrace was wrong in my opinion. Whether you like modern art or not, this piece evolved the art world, and pushed the boundaries of the definition of art and it demands respect despite the lack of developed technique.

He made this work to display the emotion of what it was like to watch the sunrise on the bay. Many people credit this artwork as the birth of the impressionist movement because it was so.

Everyone can learn from this piece.

I use this piece as means of evolution. Moving on from people that have no more meaning to my life, entering myself into a new environment, and developing my individual character and belief.

I have been lucky enough to see this work of art in person, and it inspires me. If nothing else, it reminds me to constantly challenge myself to redefine and reframe the things that I value. It pushes me to evolve my way of thinking and my open mindedness towards change.

Art is older than us, and the beauty of it is that it will never stop evolving; deconstructing, adapting, rebuilding. Just as in the piece, the skyline is hazy. There is no telling where evolution will bring us next, but like the boat on the harbor, we have to be willing to change and seek the next thing on the horizon.

The Child’s Bath, 1890. Mary Cassatt. Collection of the Art Institute of Chicago.

The piece below is an oil painting. In this work, a woman in a striped dress is bathing her child. The viewer will notice much detail in the front of the image and in the back, notice the very loose shapes in the furniture. This allows the viewer to focus on the mother’s relationship with her daughter, which is the only focus that the mother has.

I really love this painting. My mother will always say that this is her favorite work of art. My mother is not a big fan of art. She doesn’t really know much about it and she can only provide a listening ear when my father goes on tangents about his art opinions. However, here at Penn State, my mother took one (and only one) art history course.

My mother’s favorite painter is Mary Cassatt. She is a Pittsburgh artist who came from money. She attended art school in Paris, and over the course of my life, she’s become one of my favorite artists because Cassatt is my mother’s favorite.

Something that I love about Cassatt’s work is that she perfectly captures motherhood. Cassatt was one of the first influential women in the art world. She was an especially important figure during the impressionist movement.

The mother’s relationship with her daughter is tender, just as it is in every other piece that Cassatt has made. I really enjoy her work and the common expressions of the mother and child. Each piece is a window into the real life of a mother, not a portrait that a family prepared at length for. While viewing, you can feel the mother’s love for her young.

We have a few prints by Mary Cassatt hanging around our house. Child in Bath is my favorite. It’s placement is perfect: right outside of my room. With a multiple blogs about my father and a blog about my own work, I really wanted my mother to shine through. She is someone I am passionate about talking about as well and though my connection with her is not dependent on art, I think that my love for her shines through in this piece.

Being a female engineer and a project director for Westinghouse, my mother is no nonsense because she had to be. My mother’s love for me is casual and essential. She is not extremely nurturing and caring, but she is reliable. I do not expect sympathy from my mother. I expect my mother to come into the room with a white board and a marker to make a pros and cons list. Cassatt’s work captures the duty of a mother to her children and I think that is why my mother connects with her work so well.

• For my advocacy project, I want to create a short 3-4 minute short video that informs the public about health communication and the importance of honesty in care.

https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/cast/hd_cast.htm

Detective Balcom, Effie Frank 2023.

Over time, art has evolved into a pillar of my personality. I thought that for one of my final passion blogs, I would write about some of the artwork I have created my fourth year of high school.

For my advanced art class senior year, each student has the task of choosing a topic that will be their concentration for the whole year.

Some of my favorite artworks that I made stemmed from the topic I chose my senior year: Murder Mystery. While many students choose topics of climate change or beauty, I wanted to pick a concentration that would challenge me and force me to put more effort into.

For the project, I wrote a mystery about the murder of a rich book publisher, Mr. Abbott and I tasked myself with the goal of visually telling the story of the murder from the perspective of the Detective, Dr. Balcom.

At the end of the schoolyear, I had the honor of getting my work displayed in one of three showcases and at the Scholastics Art Show. My murder mystery portfolio won a bronze key. All artwork pictured below is my own. Only the works pictured in my display case were created for my murder mystery art concentration.

I made four large-scale projects throughout the year. For the first project, I made portraits of each of the murder suspects in oil pastel with their character profiles attached to the back.

For the second project, I made a diorama of the scene of the crime. I hand-made each piece of furniture and used textile samples to create rugs, and upholster my little couch with leather. I cut out windows and made globes and candles with air-dry clay.

For my third project, I made an oil painting of the detective put on the case.

In my fourth project, I visually revealed the solution to the murder with a story board, with each suspect being represented by their signature color from their portrait. I wanted this project to feel underdeveloped and slightly imperfect in order to reflect the nature of real storyboards, because I wanted the viewer to interpret the work as preparation for the shots of a future movie.

I loved how the works of my concentration flowed with each other. However, my favorite work was by third project (see below).

This was a particularly challenging process because oil painting not only takes an extremely long time, but it also takes a strong understanding of the chemicals involved with the medium. Oil painters cannot use water when diluting their paints, so they must use chemicals like turpentine to clean brushes and change colors.

I think that throughout the development of this series, I grew as an artist because the plot of the story I made forced me to think about the details: body language, facial expression, and clothing appearance all became clues to the story. After these works, I began to see every detail of my pieces as nods to a larger story that was being told through the work, and that added more passion and expression to my paintings.

Liberty Leading the People, 1830, Eugene Delacroix

It was the summer before my ninth grade year when my father, sister, and I visited the Louvre. My dad is an art teacher, so when we went on a trip to Europe to visit my mom who was working in a small English town, he insisted on stopping at as many museums as our legs and connecting trains could carry us to. We visited 5 museums during our time in Europe, sometimes visiting more than one museum in a day due to the time crunch that we faced. Contrary to popular belief, soaking up all the culture France and England have to offer is no easy feat in 3 weeks… but boy did we try our hardest.

It was also the year that I had torn my ACL, MCL, and meniscus. I was unknowingly walking across Europe with three torn and pulled ligaments, but I would never dare to complain because those 3 weeks were the greatest of my life. It was a formative experience for me because during that time not being able to play soccer made me feel weak, as though a piece of my personality had been stripped from me. Europe made me see that there is so much more life has to offer. Even though sometimes I was too tired to walk, I think I knew that I would never get a chance to experience art to that extent again in my life. Though, sadly, I’ll never get a chance like that again, knowing that it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity made me value my experiences in those museums.

In a red painted room with high vaulted ceilings, there was one painting in particular that resonated me and made me stand still and reflect. I think that this piece perfectly captures my experience in Europe, though my steaks were obviously less high than those in the painting.

The piece is called Liberty Leading the People and it was painted by Eugene Delacroix in 1830 during the height of the French Revolution. This work was a piece of Pro-Revolution propaganda, and I must say if I were a French proletariat, I would definitely have been moved by the message of this piece and influenced into joining the revolution.

Liberty Leading the People Depicts the personification of Liberty holding up the French flag and encouraging the members of the revolt to march on. The Flag and liberty are both a light region of the painting that serves as a contrast to the dark borders, pulling your eyes in. The proletariat French are not dressed as an organized unit, and they are fighting upon the fallen, but the work communicates the beautiful sense of duty and urgency that was felt by the French at the time. feel a connection to this piece because the central subject shares my sentiment in her expression and body language.

Seeing this painting in person made me take the role of “underdog” with honor. Liberty and I were both optimistic for the future and willing to push ourselves to overcome our obstacles and I think that anybody can pull away a similar message from this piece.

This painting makes me think of triumph for the weak and the glory of giving something your all.

 

Vincent van Gogh, Starry Night, 1889, Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Art is powerful, and I think one of the most beautiful things about art is its power to develop even though its a stagnant object. Once finished and placed in a museum, the composition of a work of art will never change, but I find it beautiful that the interpretation and (more importantly) meaning of a work of art can evolve long after an artist is dead.

For any person arguing that art should not be valued to the extent by which the core sciences are in modern society, I would argue that their mentality is direct evidence of the loss of understanding behind art. Art is powerful because it is constant yet evolutionary. Art is meant to be argued over, and I think that’s why modern society sees such derivation and misunderstanding in the art world today.

Modern artists make statements that devolve into nonsense and as a result, the viewer is uninterested because they no longer understand or relate to the art. To me, that’s scary. I don’t like where art is going because it no longer changes minds or influences people like it did before. The passion surrounding the art world is lacking both in creation and viewership. Modern art seems… lazy to me.

I spend a lot of time trying to seem like a cultured, maybe even tortured art lover. I would silently judge people who liked “basic” works of art like the Mona Lisa, Monet’s Waterlilies, and Starry Night by Van Gogh. But after I watched one of my five favorite films for the first time, Midnight in Paris, I changed my mind.

Midnight in Paris, a film with a poster that mirrors Starry Night, changed my perspective on Starry Night because it “painted” (wink) the piece in a new light. What once was an overprinted work of art then become a symbol for the changing of art along with the values of life.

The lesson that Owen Wilson, one of my favorite actors, learns in the film after Owen Wilson time travels back to the height of the 1920s is that we all wish we were born in a different time. We want to experience things that have already happened in the height of creation so much that we don’t see the wonderful developments of current life, and I’ve brought that new lens to Starry Night.

To me, Starry Night is a divine moment in time captured by van Gogh, serving the message that each detail of current life has beauty. The viewer doesn’t care what detail occurs outside of the framing of the painting, because the frame of the town is enough – a little world that is enough the way it is.

Though I constantly complain about the pathway modern art has taken, it is important to keep in mind that changes in art directly reflect changes in society. Modern art is important and crucial, and there are plenty of valuable components that the viewer should make a greater effort to understand.

Death and Life, 1915, Gustav Klimt, Leopold Museum Vienna, Austria.

For passion blogs, this semester, I must admit that analyzing art history wasn’t the first idea that came to my head. I began by choosing a topic I felt I could write about, not one that I am necessarily passionate about.

So I’ve decided to analyze works of art and break apart the stylistic choices the painters made to get their messages across as well as the history behind some of the most influential works of history.

Here is a rough outline of the entry

• • • My connection to the work.
    • The symbolism and meaning of the piece.
    • The influence of the work in following art.

Today, I chose to analyze Gustav Klimt’s Death and Life, which is one of my favorite pieces of art ever. I love Klimt’s style and I hope to one day see his works in person, in Vienna Austria. He is the primary reason why I have an interest in traveling to the Austria. His work (combined with Billy Joel’s “Vienna”) made me dive into the culture of Austria. Gustav Klimt is my, and my father’s, absolute favorite artist. My dad is a high school art teacher, but he paints and makes jewelry during the summers when he has free time. In our house, we have a bookshelf full of art history books, and from time to time I like to open a random one and leaf through some of the pages, just to look at the paintings. We both adore how we depicts the vividness of life with his pattern, and my dad especially loves the gold leaf Klimt puts on his later works.

The Carnegie Museum of Art has one painting by Klimt, titled Orchard (1917), however I would rather see paintings of his with the human figure rather than fields. Klimt’s style is very recognizable, containing vivid color, loud pattern, and often depicting the feminine form.

The message that Klimt is attempting to send through this piece is naturally the circle of life. Notice how your eye as a viewer circles through the painting, from the skull’s head down his robes, to the feet of the living, and ultimately focusing on the baby’s body. The side of death is lonely and cold. Death’s robe is dark, with blacks, purples, and blues, with crosses covering the length of his body. However, life is full, comprised of people of all ages and forms. The side of life is colorful, with a greater variety of pattern, the pattern resembling other types of life found in nature. The message of this piece is obvious, life continues in a circle as time goes on, in a never ending pattern, as a never ending fight between life and death.

Gustav Klimt’s work not only influenced the use of color in future art. Gustav Klimt is a prime example of how an artist can change over their lifetime. An artist with a strictly realistic style became an artist of abstraction and feeling. Over the course of his life, Klimt’s works became highly abstract. This demonstrates an artist’s ability to experience drastic change throughout a lifetime.

Does Improv Mix with the Regency Era?

I recently stumbled upon a new discovery while lost in my mindless Instagram scrolling (that I should definitely start managing, I know). It was this trailer for a production of a Jane Austen play that is improvisational and I – of course – dove right into research for my next blog post directly after taking a moment to marvel at how impressive Instagram’s algorithm is.

When I looked up the website online, I found that ticket prices for these live shows range from $75 to $85. This is an ongoing production that was once held inside at a theater and then shifted during the spring to be held outside in a courtyard at the Impro theatre for the second season of its production. My grandmother would love to see this because when my sister and I were kids, she used to take us to the local tea-house for tea and lunch where they served mini sandwiches and desserts. Those were some of the fondest memories I have of my grandma, so I think that this is a show that I would greatly enjoy going with my grandmother, sister, and mother with since tea is served along with the show!

The way that the play functions is they draw inspiration from live audience input and director Paul Rogan creates a storyline out of the suggestions. It is then up to the actors to *loosely* follow the plotline, but develop their characters and keep their audiences interested along the way!

Based off of the videos I watched from my phone when going to the account, I was impressed with the adaptability of the actors. One of the prompts given by the audience was “If Jane Austen wrote Squid Game.” The actors of course had no proper props or sets to put on this production, but they handled the difficult assignment well, with one of the actors comedically pulling out an invisible gun.

I think that this is an extremely challenging job for the staff of Jane Austen Unscripted. To begin by attaching the production to the name of one of the most influential artist puts so much pressure on the show. To attempt to make the characters as lovable as they are in the original novels takes time and practice. To add another level of complexity by making the show comedic requires the cast to juggle multiple facets of the show at once. From what I’ve seen, I’m very impressed by the skill of these actors.

I personally think that this is a really interesting idea. After learning about it I was immediately jealous that I didn’t live anywhere near the Garry Marshall Theatre in California. I really would have loved to see it live, but I was happy just to watch clips of the production on my phone. I think that just the fanfare of the Austen world, with the proper English dialect, period piece clothing, and exaggerated emotions of the characters of the novels are a great source of love surrounded by the world of Austen and the way that Jane Austen Unscripted cleverly ties in comedy with classic Austen elements makes for an extremely enjoyable production.

“Oh my god, I’m totally buggin’,” An Adaptation of Emma.

 

I recently revisited a fantastic film, Clueless. This is an example of a great Jane Austen adaptation because in my opinion, it’s hilarious! I really like that this film takes a lot of liberties and almost completely separates itself from the original apart from the fundamental aspects of the plot. The relationships between modern day Emma and Mr. Knightley, named Cher and Josh, played by Alicia Silverstone and Paul Rudd.

I think the strongest aspect of this film is the chemistry that Alicia Silverstone and Paul Rudd share. I remember watching this movie as a kid and being completely blown away by how well the two actors worked with each other. I think that it was good enough for me to develop a small crush on Paul Rudd.

This film follows Cher, a lovable and seemingly stupid girl shrouded by popularity. Her passion is setting people up, always seeing herself as too good for the other people in her school. While she starts off shallow, Josh, her stepbrother (ew I know) starts to uncover layers to her personality and she eventually finds that she is intelligent and worthy, causing her to right wrongs and become a better, more mature person. This is the general plot from the story Emma, but the film takes many liberties.

My favorite scene of the film is when Cher realizes that she’s in love with Josh. It’s quite literally a lightbulb moment. There’s a water fountain behind her that turns on directly before she says “Oh my god. I love Josh!” and I think that’s such a great part of the movie, because Emma also has this revelation of slight disgust into fond acceptance. I think that it’s really sweet that someone could have so much distain for a person that they’ve known for such a long time that can develop into feelings of warmth. I also love this scene because Cher recognizes that Josh makes her a better person, and he’s hard on her because he cares about her; Even though that annoys Cher, she’s realized that she likes that he pushes her. I’ve included the video above.

I remember being so weirded out the first time I watched the film because of the stepsibling nature of the love interests. Honestly, I still think it’s weird today, but if the viewer can ignore that weird relationship, they’ll find a hilarious movie with a significant amount of substance behind it.

I watched this film with my mom, and she didn’t like it. I remember thinking, “what’s not to like?” I think that this movie is a snapshot of a time period that my mom couldn’t relate to and had no desire to relate to, but I almost think that’s the point. You may see a theme in my blogs, but the design of this movie is once again to help a younger generation relate to Austen’s works.

This movie is great because it takes a classic and spins it into an original film. Clueless adds a modern take on an already classic plot by adding comedy and not taking itself too speciously. Who doesn’t adore a story about a main character reaching maturity through love? 

Brainnns…

I sat down to watch this movie for the first time when writing this blog. Watching this movie had always been on my bucket-list, and I had always been slightly intrigued, and what better Halloween themed passion blog than reviewing a Jane Austen movie about zombies? I was so surprised to learn that Natalie Portman produced the movie. I think that it’s unbelievable that a movie that seems so stupid should have this significant of a budget.

The first line of this movie states, “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a zombie in procession of brains must be in want of more brains.” This is a reference to the first line of the novel, which states, “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” I rolled my eyes and prepared for the inevitable stupidity to ensue, but in all honesty, I was pleasantly surprised.

Mr. Darcy is the love interest, but he is also a Zombie hunter. I really did not like his voice, I could tell that the actor was trying so hard to make his voice rough and almost like Christian Bale’s portrayal of Batman. The zombies were killed in a very brutal way, I was shocked. Elizabeth and her famous sisters are also trained to kill Zombies. Elizabeth values killing zombies over marriage, unlike her sisters. Overall, this movie is almost a direct copy of Pride and Prejudice (2005). Much of the dialogue, sets, and cinematography choices are the exact same, and though I originally thought that the choice to make it a nearly the same annoyed me at the start, I grew to like the fact that it was so similar because it seemed to be a spoof on the original; like a very subtle version of Scream and Scary Movie.

Overall, I disliked the movie much less than I thought I would. I would not go so far to say it was a good movie, but I was very engaged and I think that the zombies added a new mystery element to the already classic plot. I wish that the casting for Mr. Darcy was better, I feel as though he was unlikable even after the realization that he was a good person, unlike in the 2005 and 1995 versions.

Believe it or not, this movie came from a book (just like the original Pride and Prejudice novel) and I own a copy! I somehow stumbled upon it and another book called Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters while thrift shopping and I knew I just had to buy it and add it to my Austen book collection. I’ve never read the novel though, I don’t think that I would want to dedicate that much of my time to an idea that silly. I think that the reason why I haven’t read it is because the reason why I read the other Austen books is to keep my mind active and working. I have always kept fun books and challenging but rewarding books in two different categories, but it might be time to read a novel that combines the two!