WIP (~80% complete) is due by: 6pm, W 3/10

Finished drawing is due 11:59pm, M 3/29

Guillermo Gomez-Peña (b. 1955) is a performance artist, writer, activist and radical pedagogue who lives in Mexico and the USA. He considers himself a “border brujo” and uses his body to make performance artwork about his identity. His work (performance and writing) have contributed to the ongoing debates on cultural, generational, and gender diversity, border culture and North-South relations. He founded the activist performance art group La Pocha Nostra in Los Angeles in 1993.

You can read more about him here:

https://www.guillermogomezpena.com/about/

Hyperallergic Article

Welcome to the Third World (2004) is a clear example of how Gómez-Peña uses his cultural stereotypes to mock fetishized views of his identity. In his viral performance, he highlights the common perceptions of the Chicano lifestyle while dressed in a wide array of cross-cultural costume.

In this satirical depiction, Gómez-Peña states: “To be an American is a complicated matter. You are in relation to the multiplicity of looks you are able to display. I am brown therefore I am underdeveloped. I wear a mustache therefore I am Mexican. I gesticulate therefore I am Latino. I am horny therefore I am a sexist. I experiment therefore I am not authentic. I speak about politics therefore I am un-American. My art is indescribable therefore I am a performance artist. I talk therefore I am. Period.”

Lorna Simpson b. 1960 is an interdisciplinary artist from Brooklyn, New York. She received her BFA in Photography from the School of Visual Arts in New York, and went to the University of California, San Diego for her MFA. Her earliest work was as a documentary street photographer, before moving her observations of race and society into her studio. Simpson began exploring ethnic divisions in the 1980s era of multiculturalism. Her most notable works combine words with photographs of anonymously cropped images of women and occasionally men. While the pictures may appear straightforward, the text will often confront the viewer with the underlying racism still found in American culture.

You can read more about her here:

https://lsimpsonstudio.com/bio

http://www.jeudepaume.org/index.php?page=article&idArt=1836

Momentum (2010-11)— the memory of a dance performance from her childhood is transformed into something more playful and questioning. Almost seven minutes long, the performance is mirrored on the screens and begins before the actual dancing, with the dancers standing still. Everyone has gold skin and hair as well as a gold costume, so the film seems both mundane – the dancers wait, pirouette, stand still, look bored – and yet imbued with a Hollywood musical un-realness. Again, there is an odd flatness to proceedings, as if the memory of her initial disappointment is the key emotional determinant here.

Jacolby Satterwhite (b. 1986) is an American Artist who makes digital performances and 3D prints that often reference the body and public space. Satterwhite was born in Columbia, South Carolina; he lives and works in New York.

PBS Art21— Bringing together such practices as vogueing, 3D animation, and drawing, Satterwhite’s dreamlike videos explore his own body and queerness while also incorporating his mother’s identity, her schizophrenia, and the thousands of illustrations she made throughout his childhood. Satterwhite started out as a painter but shifted his practice when he discovered new media. He often works in front of a green screen and is drawn to the virtual space because of its potential as a queer arena, but his performances also take place in public outdoor spaces.

You can read/watch more about him here:

https://art21.org/artist/jacolby-satterwhite/

https://artintimeslikethis.com/jacolby-satterwhite

Country Ball, Jacolby Satterwhite, 2012 (12:38 min.)

"Country Ball is the attempt to recreate a home video from the late 80’s of my family’s mother’s day cookout. My process involved looking for 35 of my mothers drawings that illustrated outdoor recreational utilities, then I trace my mothers drawings by hand onto the computer, import them into a 3D program: build them to create a computer generated landscape. I perform in front of the camera and green screen 100 times; later inserting those videos into the virtual space to create a Hieronymus Bosch “Garden of Earthly Delights” inspired landscape. This gesture is an attempt to use drawing, performance and technology as a device to translate and document a personal mythology." —Jacolby Satterwhite

Liz Magic Laser (b. 1981) is an American video and performance artist who makes artworks about the drama of body language. Her work intervenes in semi-public spaces such as bank vestibules, movie theaters and newsrooms, involving collaborations with actors, surgeons, political strategists and motorcycle gang members. Her recent work explores the efficacy of new age techniques and psychological methods active in both corporate culture and political movements.

You can read/watch more about her here:

https://www.lizmagiclaser.com

https://art21.org/artist/liz-magic-laser/

“Kiss and Cry”, Liz Magic Laser, 2015, single-channel 4K video, 13:30 min.

From Laser's website— "For Kiss and Cry Laser worked with figure skating coach Marie Jonsson Mackenzie while she trained her two children, seven-year-old Anna and eleven-year-old Axel. Skirting the line between fiction and documentary, warm-up and performance routines are interwoven with scripted dialogue and voice-overs that trace the social construction of the innocent child. The script draws on family values rhetoric, progressive era propaganda and sociology texts on the history of childhood and child rights movements, as well as on Lee Edelman’s No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (2004). The underlying ideas were informed by the debates surrounding the culture wars of the 1990s when the imperative to protect children became an excuse for limiting the liberties of others.

“The kiss and cry” is a term that refers to the area to the side of the skating rink where coaches and competitors gather after performing to await the judges’ verdict––a media strategy invented to elicit empathy for the skaters."

1. You will need your mixed media pad and your HB pencil.

2. Choose a still of your video to turn into a gesture drawing. View it full screen and note down the time stamp.

3. Spend 10 minutes gesture drawing with your HB pencil. Fill the Page. Use the same steps as in the Gesture Warmup (using the HB pencil instead of the ebony).

4. Fast forward to a different time. It can be a few seconds different or an altogether different scene. Note the timestamp. Using you HB pencil, super impose a gesture drawing of this still. You choose where to place the drawing, but it should overlap your first drawing. Spend 10 minutes.

5. Rewind to a different time. Note the time stamp. Follow the same process with the HB pencil. Spend 10 minutes.

6. Your drawing should look abstract, like pieces of things on top of each other, objects and body parts forming a cloud of movement.

1. You will need your gesture drawing, ebony pencil, eraser, and charcoal pencils (or compressed charcoal sticks)

2. Reflect on Step 2 of your exercise.

3. Decide which parts of your drawing you want to emphasize. Look at the stills of the video again.

4. Start emphasizing with your firm-medium charcoal (you'll use soft-extra soft charcoal later). Lightly use the sides of your charcoal to unify shapes within the drawing (think about Minerva’s tutorial in 2.3 Gesture).

5. Return to the timestamps of your stills and add emphasis and contour detail with the Ebony pencil.

6. After this step you can erase different areas and lines of your drawing, but try to maintain the sense of time passing in the drawing.

7. Respond to what you see in your own drawing, adding contrast by using more pressure with the charcoals. Now, you're free to use the full range of your charcoals— black (firm- extra soft), and white. Use the tips and the sides. You can erase into the charcoal to create lines and pull out areas/shapes with the eraser.

This exercise is an experiment and it may not be beautiful, but keep pushing the drawing until it looks finished to you.

By 6pm, W 3/10: Take a photo of your drawing (~80% complete) to post on the WIP Discussion