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kazoous-blog · 7 years

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End of third year

I dont post much on here in terms of text, but it’s 2:25 a.m and I realized I forgot to post my progress over the semester so its all just a big bundle all at once. I know this looks bad, Veronika. Sorry 🙏

Either way, somehow I’ve managed to get 9 followers on this blog despite not tagging much. You 9 are the real MVPs, man. I’m not always very happy with the things I produce for school. Very rarely, in fact. I feel as though I can’t challenge myself too much these days. Every time I feel as though I might start to do so, something gets in the way. Life’s too busy, man.

But I got to thinking tonight. Right now, in fact. I only have a year left at OCAD, and I have several plans for afterwards, as always. Can never be too prepared, I say. Its either more schooling, a gap year, or diving straight into work. But I don’t quite feel prepared for either of those things just yet.

Art is really great. I’ve always thought so. But since starting OCAD, I’ve felt the definition of art has become a little obscure to me. I’ve had so many people telling me what is or isn’t art, and criticizing that the things I tend to do art ‘art’, they’re ‘design’. Isn’t design just another form of art though?? There’s a certain kind of elitism I feel, which honestly makes me feel victimized at the school. Its about 90% of the reason why I ran out of Drawing and Painting and into Integrated Media. There was so much entitlement and pretentiousness in one place in so many of the DRPT classes, it was difficult to keep track of myself. Not to say INTM is devoid of elitism. I am, after all, still in an art institution. It gets pretty tough, since everyone has that bias deep down. Everythings very subjective, too. I’ve had some professors praise what other professors have mocked. There’s never a right or wrong answer.

But there is a right or wrong way to find your own answer. A large part of my first and somewhat my second year was spent catering to what my professors wanted to see in order for me to maintain a high average. Which, I believe is necessary. But I also used to let so many voices get inside my head and anger me, to the point where I’d lose track of what was really important for the sake of staying mad at... nothing. Not that it was nothing. Its just that it should have been nothing. But it was a very big something at the time.

Now, I try to be critical of the artistic choices I make. I question my own choices more often than I used to. Why that medium? Why that composition? Those colours? That figure? Why, why, why. And also, why not. See, its so easy to stay confined in your little comfort zone. That being said, I enjoy making art thats easy to understand. Or, at least, easy for the viewers to formulate their own idea of what is happening. You know that elitism I talked about earlier? Theres an epidemic in the art world right now, I feel. And its the same epidemic thats plagued the scientific world in the past few decades. Its the impossible vocabulary we use in a pathetic effort to sound intelligent, to the point where its incomprehensible to someone aiming to learn about it. Science uses words for this vocabulary, as does art, but art has yet another dimension to it as well. The visual vocabulary, often left misunderstood by the viewers, and thus dismissed.

It saddens me, how arts gained such a sour reputation. It saddens me, because I think back to Jean-Francois Millet and the realists who rejected the biblical and aristocratic figures, and turned to the everyday folk and lifestyles of the 99% to shed some beauty on the plain. I think back to Olympia, a whore with the gaze of an emperor, who angered the Salon by simply reclining in her seat, dirty hands and high heeled feet. I think back to Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo during the Mexican Muralist movement, where they pushed for art by the people, for the people. With this new barring vocabulary, how can we allow for culture to grow? How can we welcome the people in, as art has always done?

And now that I’ve successfully puked out all of my thoughts at 2:49 am, I leave you with this, my third year of OCAD University wrapped up, but not gifted away. Its staying under my Christmas tree, and once in a while, I’ll open it back up, just to remind myself of how far I’ve come.

#an uneditted vomiting of thoughts #courtesy of your friendly neighbourhood art student

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kazoous-blog · 7 years

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