artist talk.

I saw two different artists speak on campus this week. On Monday night, I heard Anne Collier, the photographer, talk about her work. It was kind of interesting, I didn’t know much about her before I showed up at the MFA building to see her speak. She showed slides and seemed nervous.

"smoking (anne collier)"

Paired with her photographs I thought it was kind of appropriate, seemed more moving almost when she didn’t want to answer questions or talk in too much depth about her pictures. I like it when an artist’s work is personal, because it should be. While it was kind of odd that she was here to show us her pictures and talk about them but didn’t want to get into too much detail or really any detail at all, it made it seem like the pieces meant more to her because of that.

"problems (anne collier)"

Tuesday night, I saw the Chinese painter Zhi Lin talk about his work and his process as an artist. An amazing artist, it was a bit ironic because he talked and showed us his work in exactly the way I think artists should talk about their pieces. I would love to be as articulate as he was. He had a detailed presentation, including maps (he’s lived all over the world) and sketches and photographs from historic events that shaped his work. He has had a pretty amazing life it sounded like. His work drastically changed after the Tiananmen Square Protests of 1989, during which he was on a double decker bus in London. For the past fifteen years he has been working on five large scroll (seven feet by twelve feet) paintings: Five Capital Executions in China. It was pretty incredible hearing him talk about his process and seeing the slides of his works. I guess one of them is hanging in a gallery in Pasadena right now that I hope to get a chance to go see. Here is a link to the Koplin Del Rio website which has some good images of his work. http://www.koplindelrio.com/lin/capitalexecutions/lin.scrolls/index.html
"starvation (zhi lin)"