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Thoughts

I, too, am the landscape

Elizabeth Clapp

“Museum”: white wall, a spotlight, do not touch, standing, crowded, maze of galleries, walking slowly. A separation.

The Storm King Art Center is a 500 acre open-air sculpture park and a completely unique context to view art. Although only a few of the sculptures are allowed to be touched, there exists a cohabitation, a relationship between me, the sculptures, and the earth. I lie down on the cold, dying grass. Eyes open, blue sky and sculpture above.

The vast scale and openness allows for a number of things not typically experienced in a traditional museum setting:

  • Deception in scale between photos and real life, the only real way to experience the context surrounding the sculptures is to exist in the same space as them.
  • Exploration and freedom are really emphasized. There is no clear path, no signs pointing the way. You can run, you can walk, you can roll down the hill, lie down, wander through the forest and down to the river. It felt like a scaled up version of how a park or playground feels to a kid, since you are so small the world seems so large. If that makes sense. Additionally, the map lacked many reference photos so I found the best route was walking towards whatever caught my eye.
  • Within the first hour of being there, my phone decided to bug out and shut down, rebooting with 6% battery, when it was previously in the 90s. Cool, love that. Having my phone basically die made the day interesting in that I couldn’t seek out more information about the sculptures (they had titles and artist names, as well as an online link for information, but no history printed on the descriptive label itself), I had to observe them at face value. Which I feel could be comparable to walking through a gallery without reading the labels (which I also do often, unless something particular sticks out).
  • I let my imagination run a bit, as I think most people do when it comes to museums (The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, Night at the Museum franchise, etc.), though I think the lack of defined walls, the smaller or less visible quantity of security, and the fact you could be in the middle of a field, turn around 360 degrees, and not see another soul within eyesight may have fueled my thoughts. I pondered about how it would be staying there after dark, or being an alien or next generation of human being confused by past relics (the sculptures, perhaps buried halfway in dirt).

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Thoughts

The Future is in the Past, Luxury Professions, and other things on my mind

Elizabeth Clapp

Another ramble about existential dread? You betcha.

This past Tuesday (as of me writing this several weeks ago), I overheard a fellow student say “statics class won’t matter if we’re all f***king dead,” in reference to the ever-present climate change crisis. Which is true. I know we place a lot of value in our education and grades but in the end none of that matters if our future is compromised. But of course we can’t improve the course of the future if we aren’t educated enough to figure out how. We must balance living and surviving, and somehow place a value on the present versus the future.

Naturally I’ve been thinking of my own path. One professor I have this semester brought up the fact that although architecture school can be compared to the rigor of some degrees earned by medical professionals, in the end a lot of architects have a ‘luxury profession’ (clients being businesses or individuals who can afford to have custom-designed buildings) whereas doctors, lawyers, and accountants have made their professions necessary to society and everyday people. In order to guarantee a stable job, especially in the case of a recession, you have to make your services vital to society (currently a STEM-centered society). There’s another factor here, too, which is quality of life. I could be an accountant, and have both money and stability, but I would hate that job. I’m sure there are people who are passionate about accounting, but I am not one of those people. Additionally, I could have a job that I love with both stability and good pay, but if I get home at night and have no free time to take care of myself and spend time with my family, then my quality of life suffers. What is the point of building a good life for yourself if you don’t have time to enjoy it…? Finding a balance seems rare, but I’m in still in school and don’t have first-hand experience with a full time job, so I wouldn’t really know yet what is possible.

Recently I listened to someone (Greg Kletsel, faculty adviser to the Comic Club) who’s in the process of making a zine to sell at Comic Arts Brooklyn. Someone asked him if the money he makes evens out with the time and energy he spent making the zines and he said no, but sometimes it is worth it just to get an idea out of your head and into the world, and that it is always possible that someone who has the ability to pay you will see what you’ve created and take an interest in your work. What risks am I willing to take now in order to see them pay off in the future?

At the previously mentioned Comics Art Brooklyn (can you tell I started writing this forever ago but never finished), I attended a talk between Chris Ware, Francoise Mouly, and Art Spiegelman (of Maus fame). Some interesting points from their talk, along with my own idea of what they mean:

  • “The future is in the past” (as in… everything has been done before, but there are always new ways to do old things)
  • Art, although not as valued nowadays as it should be (by the likes of the government & funding), is critical in “teaching empathy”. We are very much pushed in a STEM direction nowadays, which is great, but ‘soft skills’ must be learned and a good way to do that is through art, which is self-expression and the understanding of others’ expression.
  • “If someone sees something they don’t understand in a museum, they think they’re stupid. If someone reads a comic they don’t understand, they think the author is stupid.” It is all in the context in which art is presented which gives it a value. I think this loosely ties back to the talk with Prof Kletsel in which he mentioned that zines, which can be several pages of unique illustrations and a story, can be sold for as little as $5 while a print of a single image from the zine can be an acceptable price of $10. Of course quality of paper and that kind of thing is a factor, but zines are undervalued in the art space. A piece hung on the wall seems more important than a piece found within a book that’s been stapled together by hand. This also reminds me of that shredded Banksy painting- the art that was never meant to be stuck in the context of a frame (but of course the act of destroying it in order to remove its value made it even more valuable).

I feel like this is just the beginning of dissecting the value of art and time, quality of life, that kind of thing, but I’ve been sitting on this draft for at least a month. Have some photos from CAB…

Comics & Zines

First Year of Architecture School: A Zine

Elizabeth Clapp

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A lil zine to encapsulate my first year of architecture school. Obviously didn’t go full in detail about my assignments and that kind of thing but it’s kind of a general overview of my thoughts and feelings towards the campus, food, my dorm, the city, etc… I experienced so much! It’s hard to remember things that weren’t normal to me but grew to be normal.

If you want to know what I did on a weekly basis, I did successfully post every Sunday night during the school year on my instagram (@elclapp) just to give a lil update. Still deciding on whether or not to do it again this year? It was a nice weekly personal reflection but I feel like I’m feeding into that toxic social media culture.

Here are some thoughts on the zine and my improvement from my 2018 ‘Senior Year’ zine:

  • One major difference is that the Senior Year zine was drawn over the course of the last part of the school year and post-graduation, while this one was drawn completely in the summer. This might have helped it look more consistent (but even then I started drawing in May, took a break, and finished in July). Also, drew a draft of the Senior Year one on paper, then drew over it digitally, whereas this one I just jumped in digitally.
  • I definitely like the limited color palette more than what I had going on last year with various bright colors, and I think that my art style is a bit more consistent with the simple cartoon and stick figure combo, though I’m still playing around with my art style as it comes to eyes and noses… I like drawing squiggly or triangle noses but for the sake of easiness I went with just a line. I like eyes with a pupil, but dot eyes are much easier to get looking the same (see my zine from last year for what I’m talking about… those eyes are all over the place). Don’t get me started on full bodies and hands… I don’t know what I’m doing (cough, one reason I wish arch students had foundation year)
  • I’m still working on my lettering. Typing all the text would probably save me a lot of time but I like the more personable feel of lettering. For a few places I wrote on top of text just so the spacing, size, and angle were consistent. Other places I got impatient (like the middle pages) and just wrote, which makes it a bit more sloppy. Rereading I found a few inconsistencies with my uppercase ‘I’s. Hopefully it is all legible though.
  • The cover! I really like how this cover turned out. I’m slowly creeping out of my comfort zone of static poses. Also really like the contrast of the colored photo background and my drawing, reminds me of like a graphic novel or something?? Idk I just like it. I’m standing in front of my second semester design final in my typical presentation outfit.

I hope you have enjoyed this lil thing I made, and thanks for reading this far! Can’t believe I only have about a month left of summer….

Let me know what you think in the comments or on instagram : o

Uncategorized

Some Poetry I Guess

Elizabeth Clapp

Based on Milton Avery’s Girl With Cello 

Teacher’s Kid.
Perched in the backseat
“I want to play cello”
sitting, right angle
feet planted, praying mantis
two bodies merging
into one sound.
Balancing the musical equation,
I never learned bass clef.
Good Boys Doing Fine or otherwise.
Breaking and Entering.
The porridge is either
too old fashioned or too advanced.

 
Based on Doug Jeck’s Angel

Tourist of Heaven.
Dead weight in Sunday School,
ankles crossed,
hand open,
the body of christ,
tiny cups of grape juice.
Grafted into something,
never baptized.
Naked in your dream,
pretending to understand
the end of the world.
2012. Hobby Lobby.
Do you believe in God?
We haven’t talked about it since.

 

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