Sunday, December 4, 2011

Visiting Artist Lectures

Tyree Guyton
Started the Heidelberg Project in 1986 in old African American communities in Detroit.  The Heidelberg project itself is a community folk art that paints and sculpts on and around many abandoned houses turning them into colorful public places.  The project was started with a few paint strokes on a house before long had covered an entire neighborhood.  140 countries have visited Heidelberg Street and Tyree Guyton was given his doctorate in 2009 in Brussels.  Guyton wants his art to heal people and encourage change in the community.
       Tyree was very passionate in his lecture but seem to have trouble dealing with very many questions which left him coming across as absent minded.  He probably is more used to giving high school lectures.

Lilly McElroy
Lilly is largely a performance artist and many of her works have a flair of humor while still making interesting notes on public behavior.  She likes to put interruptive stickers in public places to raise awarness of issues and of peoples own surroundings.  It sounds almost like a 4th wall break of real life.  She grew up in Arizona and was heavily influenced by cowboys, rodeos, and the movie "8 seconds."  One of her pieces is a series of photos where she is in a public place huddled on the floor wearing a slip.  She video recorded herself hugging strangers in the streets to see their reactions.  She blocked off a piece of the sidewalk and tried to keep people from entering it.  This one was particularly playful in that strangers would take part in either helping her or trying to foil her.  She also took photos of herself jumping into strangers arms at different bars.  Overall her works are fun and interesting social experiments.

Carrie Mae Weems
Weems is a very well known African American photographer.  She tries to grapple with why she does and why she does not like certain art works.  She is very occupied with finding her voice.  Recently she has been making propaganda art to raise awareness of violence in certain areas.  She is also very interested in unrequited love.  Her film was fairly dull though with very repetitive shots and little cohesive structure.  Overall it seemed like her lecture didn't give us much reason to be impressed with her work aside that she is a well established artist.  

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