Art is in the Eye of the Beholder

"Give me a museum, and I'll fill it." -Pablo Picasso

This is my critique of two art shows at UNC.

Of the two shows, the one I liked better was Pick of the Litter. I really liked Victorian House. I thought it was very impressive architecturally, especially since it was made out of just paper. I also liked Icarus. I think the story of Icarus is very interesting. In Greek Mythology, Icarus and his father were imprisoned in Crete, so they fashioned wings out of feathers and wax to fly away and escape. Icarus’ father warned him not to fly too close to the sun, but he was careless and did fly too close, which made his wings melt and he fell to his death. This piece was abstract and I don’t usually like abstract art. It can be confusing and usually has a less than helpful title like Unknown or Abstract, which makes me question the artists’ vision and intent by it. I don’t really know why, but I did like this piece. My favorite piece in this show however, was Halloween Mask. The piece was covered in newspaper and the thing that really drew me to it was that the newspaper was very thoughtfully and specifically placed. For example, around the border of the wings said Washington Post and the date over and over. I really enjoy that kind of meticulous attention to detail in art.

I did also enjoy the Detritus Transformed student exhibition. Here I feel I must reiterate that I think art is in the eye of the beholder. I think art becomes art when it means something to you. For example, when seeing the sculpture Story Time, I almost wrote it off. It looked like another hunk of rusted metal. Upon closer inspection I found in some of the holes in the metal there were pictures from a favorite book of mine, Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss. This small detail changed everything. I now had a connection to the piece and this made it more art to me. Also, I think people take from art what they want to take from it. In the sculpture Light of Life there is a light fixture with no bulbs. In one socket there was a plant and plants are obvious symbols for life. In the other two sockets there were nails. What I’m bringing to this piece is my background as a Christian. When I saw the nails I thought of Jesus Christ whom is often represented by nails, for He was nailed to a cross and crucified. This may not have been what the artist had in mind at all, but it’s what I brought to it and made a connection to. Both of these exhibits were quite thought provoking, which I think is a very good thing.

*Pantoum*

What time is the 3 o’clock Parade Pantoum?
By Christie Cutshall

It’s the most magical place on Earth.
Is that a hidden Mickey?
No. It’s all laughter: Walt was a total genius.
Look, Space Mountain!

Is that a hidden Mickey
next to City Hall?
Look! Space Mountain,
I can’t wait! Where’s the bathroom?

It’s next to city hall.
Let’s get in line!
I can’t wait: where’s the bathroom
again?

Let’s get in line
for Small World
again!
Let’s sing the song

for Small World:
It’s a world of laughter, a world of tears.
Let’s sing the song,
We’re at Disney World!

It’s a world of laughter. A world of tears?
No. It’s all laughter! Walt was a total genius.
We’re at Disney World;
It’s the most magical place on Earth!


I worked at Disney World this past summer and my pantoum is full of Disney things that don’t always make sense unless you’ve worked at Disney, so this is my pantoum glossary:

-What time is the 3 o’clock parade? It sounds stupid, but I’ve actually gotten this question before. Disney specifically tells us we aren’t allowed to laugh at guests when they ask seemingly stupid questions because we don’t actually know what they mean. For example, the 3 o’clock parade, the Dreams Come True parade, starts at the back of the park and does not reach the front of the park until 3:20. So the 3 o’clock parade is at 3:20.
-Disney engineers, called Imagineers, have hidden little Mickey Mouses all over Disney property and some people spend their whole vacations hunting for these hidden Mickeys.
-When I say Walt, I am referring to Walt Disney, the creator of Disney World.
-When guests asked me questions, probably 85% of the time they wanted to know where the bathroom was and it was next to City Hall.

Nothing Rhymes With Orange...

When reading two works about poetry, one by A.E. Housman and the other by Mary Oliver, I have come to realize something. I am not a poet. I have on occasion scrawled a few lines with more fluidity than a paragraph of summary ought to have but I am not a poet. I seldom think about the things Oliver discusses in her Poetry Handbook, or at least I think about them completely differently. I thought it interesting how she talked about how so much thought goes into one particular sound in a poem. Her classic example is the difference between rock and stone. When I hear the word rock, I think of just any old rock you find on the ground; asymmetrical, random and jagged shape, earth tones. When I hear the word stone I think of slightly wider range in color and smoothly rounded either refined by man or ocean. She goes into detail explaining the differences in the actual sounds of the words and she arrives basically at the same place I did. Rock ends with a muted sound which makes it more definite. Rock has a short O and stone has a long O sound. I feel as though I am a visual picture person and thought about it differently than that of a word poetry person.

Despite the fact that I would not classify myself as a poet, I still greatly appreciate reading poetry. I don’t know this for certain but I would guess that the authors of both of these works are poets. I think that when somebody is a poet nothing but poetry comes from their pen. Even their grocery lists must look like shimmering haikus. I love the way that poets paint with their words. It is such an interesting medium and I look forward to getting to try it myself.

What We Find Our Identity In

I have recently read two short stories. One by Nessa Rapoport titled The Woman Who Lost Her Names and the other Covered Bridges by Barbara Kingsolver. Both these pieces have to do with one’s identity. The first story is finding identity in a name and the latter is finding identity in a child.

Of course the first thing that pops into my head after reading Rapoport’s story is the eloquent phrase of William Shakespeare’s hand; “What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” I feel as though too much importance is placed on trivial things such as names. The name is not really what matters, but the person is. In Inuit culture the children are not named until their personalities become apparent. When that takes place the parents name the child after a person the child reminds them of. So there could be a man with the name of Amy for example. The personality of the person is what is important. The main character in The Woman Who Lost Her Names is a woman named Sarah who finds great importance to several different names, many of which are her own. Sarah despises her middle name and wants to break her religious traditions and go against her husband when naming her daughter. I personally love my name; Christie Ann Cutshall. Cutshall is a nice German sounding name, difficult to mispronounce and easy enough for my kindergarten students to say. Ann, a middle name shared by the majority of the women in my family, is a seemingly plain middle name that I happen to think lovely. And then there is Christie. It is spelled differently from anyone I’ve ever met and not short for anything, which makes it rather unique. But the name is not what makes me who I am.

Covered Bridges is a story about the decision to create life to try to make one self immortal. Although I think having children hardly creates immortality. The main character, Lena, does discover this eventually and decides having children is not for her. Initially she thought having children would make her complete but through a series of trials discovers that all she really needs is her husband. This story brings up something that I really want in life; a husband and a family. Although, I want it much earlier in life than Lena is considering it. I really enjoyed this story mostly because I like the way Kingsolver writes. There were several phrases that stood out to me. For example, “Over the phone, her laughter sounded like a warm bath.” I love when someone describes something in a way that you never would have thought of, but it totally fits. I also like the line “When a bridge reaches this age, it’s important to listen to what it has to say to you as you walk through it.” Again I enjoy her descriptions like you wouldn’t expect but that fit perfectly anyway. I love how things that are old really speak to you like they have a story to tell. Not just bridges, but trees and toys and houses too. I also really enjoyed the passage about photographs. The narrator describes pictures as never truly capturing the feeling in the moment. It suspends the happy moment flat in time but it could never portray the true happiness felt at that second by the photographer gazing upon the brightly colored scene with the one he most loved as the subject. I am a photographer and I love taking pictures, but there are just some things that pictures can not capture and that will forever have to remain as only fond memories.

Letter to Jacques Hadamard

Albert Einstein was an incredibly brilliant man. His writings are also incredibly difficult to understand. It took me several readings to finally begin to comprehend Einstein’s Letter to Jacques Hadamard. In the letter, Einstein is responding to questions posed by Hadamard about thoughts and specifically words in thoughts. Overall, Einstein says that words play absolutely no role in thoughts at all. He says that once you have a thought well established only then can words be added after a tremendous amount of effort is exerted. I find this quite interesting, but I’m not exactly sure what Einstein is implying here. Does he think that this is the way it really is, or does he think this is the way it should be? Many people often “speak without thinking”; thinking about what they are saying or thinking about the consequences what they are saying will have. So how could the thought process be so complete before words are involved and yet people still speak without thinking?

I am also slightly confused about where all of this pre-word thought takes place. I’m sure there was a much deeper place that Einstein had in mind, but I know it is very difficult if not impossible to not be thinking of words at all times. Whether it is the lyrics to a song stuck in your head or a song you’re listening to or the words in a conversation someone is having with you there are always words there. Especially when you’re purposely trying to not think of words there are words. When I’ve tried it before it usually ends up looking like this: “okay focus, don’t think of words, don’t think of words, stop thinking of words, stop, stop, stop. Let’s focus on breathing, breathe in, breathe out. Okay listen to the fan, whir, whir, whir, whir…” and so on and so forth.

I thought his phrasing was rather intriguing when he said “In a stage when words intervene at all…” This to me sounds like Einstein thinks words are superfluous and in the way. When they are intervening they are in the middle of his thought process and they do not need to be.

In section (E) the question that was posed was about mental pictures and words different positions in consciousness. I thought his word choice in the answer was interesting. He says “It seems to me that what you call full consciousness is a limit which can never be fully accomplished.” It sounds to me as though he is dismissing the question entirely because it is irrelevant. It is true that we as humans only use a minuscule portion of our brain, but I believe Einstein is sounding rather superior in this statement.

Culture, Creativity and Imagination

My definitions of Culture, Creativity and Imagination

Culture: I feel as though this work has no concrete definition. The dictionary defines culture as the behaviors, beliefs and characteristic of a particular social, ethnic, or age group. So culture is just a way to categorize people into groups that believe the same things or have the same behaviors. If you were to say be immersed in somebody else’s culture, that would include the customs, behaviors, traditions, food, clothing and language among many other factors that make a people group who they are.

Creativity: According to wikipedia, creativity largely has to do with ideas: the creation of new ideas and playing around with old ideas. I agree with this rather vague definition and strongly believe that creativity is something that is extremely individualistic. Everybody is creative in some way or another and no two people are creative in the same way. Individual creativity is how we express ourselves.

Imagination: I like the way that Figment portrays imagination. He is a small purple dragon and he is the Figment of your imagination. He comes from the ride Journey into Imagination at Epcot
in Disney World. This is a video of his ride:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kF25QnrdgaY&eurl=http://www.facebook.com/home.php
The basic definition of imagination is that of forming mental images or concepts of what is not actually present to the senses. But the thing to remember is that even though the things you imagine are not present to the senses, things that are present to the senses can spark your imagination. According to Figment; for every sound your ears are hearing a thousand thoughts can start appearing and your mind sees more than what your eyes see. I think that kids need to be encouraged at a young age to use their imaginations: to be silly, make up stories and play pretend. Imagination is a skill that can be worked on and one that is extremely important to every person. I believe that it is also crucial to one’s critical thinking skills.

When it comes to defining the difference between creativity and imagination I think it is easiest to just look at the basic root of each word. Creativity: create, and Imagination: imagine. So creativity is actually creating something tangible and imagination implies something you’ve only imagined.