Holly Dowidat: Self Portrait of a Young Ceramic Artist

Holly Dowidat is the young ceramic artist who created the several dogs that received SO MUCH attention throughout the August 2011 Angola Phantom Gallery Renaissance – I myself witnessed many people stopping to point, stare, comment, and take photos. In this post you will see Holly through her own words as she responds to a set of Art Beat questions tailored for self-portraiture. This is an experiment: most artists are not writers as well, but seeing them directly per their own raw thoughts and words can be revealing and worthwhile. Holly’s art is very expressive, so let’s give audience to her literary self-portrait.

First though, get some coffee or tea if you like, no need to hurry. Take your time, absorb her words and expression … get to know her! And if you haven’t seen Holly’s work yet, check out her web site at www.dowidat.mosaicglobe.com.

Now, I present Holly:

Art has always been part of my life, from my parents to my other siblings, we would spend hours drawing.  Zachary my older brother would spend hours on his projects from school and I would try to learn everything he knew...we would talk about owning an art business together and running it as partners.

My formal art education started young in school, and after graduating from Angola High school in 2003 I decided to on college at Indiana Purdue University of Fort Wayne for elementary art education, inspired by my own past teachers who helped me express myself as a child and gave me the tools and knowledge to do so.

Freshman college year I landed an internship at Walt Disney Resort’s Entertainment department. There I spent free time at MGM Studios talking to the artist and gaining knowledge. Returning to Indiana, my college studio classes took off: Printmaking, Painting, Sculpture, Metal Smiting, and Ceramics. Excited by so many different media, I opted for a Bachelors in Fine Art instead. A workshop at the Le Meridiana in Certaldo Italy changed my life, as I came back to the states very enthusiastic about Ceramics.

Regarding awards and recognition, I won a “peoples’ choice” at Fort Wayne’s Artlink, and at the end of my senior year received a solo Winger Award, a Merit of Recognition Award at the Guilford Art Center in Guilford Connecticut, a “Library's Choice” award at the Garrett Museum of Art, in addition to exhibiting in galleries within Indiana, Connecticut and Ohio. Since graduating from college in 2009, I used some of my award money to outfit a home studio, and I am now thirsty to continue in my studies at a Masters Program. 

People often ask "Why dogs?" and "How do you come up with the ideas?" My audience seems to be very interested in my concepts and ideas. I created the dog series in my senior year of college for my thesis show. I choose dogs because of my great love for them, they are all different with their own personality and they express so much. Before doing any form of clay sculpture I do a lot of research to back up my imagination.

One of my favorite dog works is titled "Edgar, Time is a Wasting," which I created early in the Italy workshop without much experience, this piece was the beginning of the dog series. Another favorite is "Autumn, Changing Monochromatic," one of the series’ largest. She has stunning detail and always prompts questions on her construction, because of her wood carving with leaves.

I get excited when an idea comes. The first steps are research and concept drawings. Even if the drawings are not correct they give me a chance to push the idea from my head onto paper, so not to lose any concept. Then it is to the clay, and that's when my imagination takes over on detail, position, and theme. Unlike many media, ceramics go through a “firing” process, and which can destroy a sculpture, so I take extra time to make sure that my sculptures never endure that. Even then, a successful first firing doesn't necessarily mean the sculpture is completed, as I then have to choose how to apply color, glaze, under-glaze, or acrylic paints. Most of my sculptures use acrylic paint, which avoids the necessity of high temperatures that might cause cracks. Once finished I look forward showing the piece to others, in galleries, museums, and through my website.

 I market most of my sculptures through galleries and museums, and most of these buyers are dog lovers, I want them to go to a good home and I know that they will be shared with others.  Some of my other “functional” work sells at art fairs for everyday use.

There are some new directions on my horizon. I am currently creating a body of work along the same direction of the dogs but using the Cheshire cat face and a playful side to express my own child like personality.  I have already created one and currently have another in the process a little on the darker side of my personality, but the idea is a very rich one.

As for advice to relative newcomers in Ceramics: Never give up! It’s not easy to pursue your dreams but working at it and always creating something new will help. I try and get in the studio every day. Sometimes art turns into a business and you can always find new networks to establish your artwork in.

Back to Stephen:

Since Holly wrote the above, I learned more about her new, in-progress cat which she said is a little on the dark side but very rich [in concept]: The cat, menacing but famished, ribs showing white through midnight fur, has just now caught in its sharp claws a plump mouse [or rat?]. Feline fangs gleaming, the ravenous cat is poised to …  The cat is the American body politic, and the mouse is the gluttonous governing class grown fat at the national expense while America has wasted. Despite its hunger the cat is far more powerful, the rat completely at its mercy. But what indeed will the cat do … ? Let the rat go to gorge yet more …  Or … ?

Good questions, Holly.

Until the next post, know that the Angola area lakes region is an Art Region, and its towns are Art Towns!

If you would like direct email notification of new Art Beat posts, simply send an email with the words “requesting Art Beat notification” in the subject line to StephenRowe.OriGraphics@yahoo.com

Stephen Rowe currently serves as the Angola Regional Artists’ Guild publicity chairman and writes two additional blogs:

ArtMissionary.blogspot.com

OriGraphics.blogspot.com

Stephen welcomes correspondence of all sort per StephenRowe.OriGraphics@yahoo.com

Art Missionary: Cultivating Poetic and Artistic Imagination in Children





An Art Missionary is anyone with a burning desire to foster interest and participation in the arts. I am an Art Missionary, and there is a good chance you are as well. Different Art Missionaries will have different priorities, favor different artistic modes, different audiences, etc. In this post, I want to share my particular desire to stimulate children’s and adolescents’ interest in practicing art.

Why? Because it really disturbs me how oppressed children are today, by the relentless commercialization of every aspect of childhood. Commercial saturation is so intense, information bombardment so high, continuous internet/texting/etc … it must be terribly hard for today’s kids to get to know their true center. These youngsters desperately need a more genuine, authentic way of experiencing the world, and art practice is an avenue toward that personal center. Children who do not live from their center will miss the greatest joys in childhood, and will live adult lives slave to artificial desires and aspirations while their souls suffocate in the ‘noise’ of our day. Hence I am an Art Missionary.

But that's just me. Other Art Missionaries will have their own special, more equanimous motivations - perhaps just the pure and simple desire to share a joy in and love of all art forms with all living people!

No matter your philosophy or place in society, if you are or want to be an Art Missionary, please stay with me here just a little while longer …

Imagination is the root of art, so I want to share a letter I wrote this past March to my grandchildren, with the objective of cultivating poetic and artistic imagination. While the method will suit adults just as well [I practice this myself], the presentation is especially designed for children. If this resonates with you, please pass it on to a child in your life:

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Dear Children,

I know you like art, so I wrote a poem especially for you. Thinking about the questions in this poem may help make you better artists:

See yon tree –

How looks it to thee?

Yet how must it seem to a bird?

Or a squirrel?

Or a deer?

Or a worm?

Or a bug?

And how to the wind and the rain?

The idea is the tree you see may look very different, depending on how you look at it … So in thinking about how a bird or a squirrel may see the tree, you start to see it differently yourself – and then you can draw or paint it differently. The more you think in this way – say by imagining how wind or rain might see a tree – the more you will begin to sense things that others haven’t thought about, and as your artistic imagination grows, you will be more and more able to show some of your new ways of seeing to others, through your art.
 

Stephen and grandson under Chicago Art Institute's
traditional Christmas-wreathed lion some years ago


Once you understand this method, you can practice it on other subjects: for instance, how might different people see your dog? Some may see a fun pet, but others may be scared of its teeth or its bark – and these different people will actually see your dog differently from each other. Especially if they should later dream about your dog – imagine drawing or painting how your dog may look in different peoples’ dreams or nightmares! That might inspire some very creative art.

**************************************************************

That's it - just a simple exercise that really can stimulate imagination if whole-mindedly engaged by a child or an adult. One of my grandchildren really loves and practices the idea – I hope other children might as well.

Until the next post, know that the Angola area lakes region is an Art Region, and its towns are Art Towns!

If you would like direct email notification of new Art Beat posts, simply send an email with the words “requesting Art Beat notification” in the subject line to StephenRowe.OriGraphics@yahoo.com

Stephen Rowe currently serves as the Angola Regional Artists’ Guild publicity chairman and writes two additional blogs:

     ArtMissionary.blogspot.com

     OriGraphics.blogspot.com

Stephen welcomes correspondence of all sort per StephenRowe.OriGraphics@yahoo.com

Cubism, Facebook, and Cyber-Cubism

When I worked in Chicago I would joke that Cubism, born of Picasso and Braque circa 1907, used to be an artistic avant-garde movement but is now the corporate way of life. Life moves on though, my engagement with corporatism a fading memory, spending far more time engaged with nature than submerged in Cyberspace, just some light blogging and even lighter traipses through Facebook these days … yet am evermore possessed by an eerie sense that Cubism has been resurrected … its apotheosis is … Facebook! And this time I am not joking.

The following exploration of the above thesis will say nothing new about Cubism per se and nothing new about Facebook per se. What is new is the metaphor of Facebook as a Cubist apotheosis, which then suggests “Cyber-Cubism” as an historically informed foundation for the artistic exploration of Facebook and Cyberspace.

After developing these themes, we will conclude by outlining a feasible computer-art installation which would present an accessible, fascinating, and profound exploration of Facebook renderings within various social strata: What does the Cyber-social space look like to people who are very different from me?

Given the millions of hours devoted to social media each day, these and other such explorations might someday inform a very important body of art.

Cubism

Cubism presented an entirely new way of “seeing,” its ultimate premise being that perception involves “more than the eye can see.” Consider looking at a woman. There are the “raw visuals,” yes, but how you process that visual information, hence what you really perceive, is very much shaped and colored by all sorts of additional influences and information such as:

Pablo Picasso: Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1907

·    Your own lifetime experience of seeing, encountering, and interacting with women.

·    Cultural expectations and norms of feminine beauty, roles, behavior, etc.

·    Your lifetime personal and cultural awareness of all other things feminine.

·    The context in which the woman appears: what is she doing, where is she doing it, who else is or isn’t playing what role in the scene, etc.

 By representing its subjects per multiple intersecting and overlapping facets, Cubism was “constructive” in rendering a perceptual complex rather than the oversimplified raw visual.

Facebook

Pablo Picasso: Portrait of Ambroise Vollard, 1910



A typical Facebook account contains a multitude of “subject” [the account holder] “slices” within an Information page and a personal Wall: a list of interests, attitudes, photos, a gallery of “friends,” several Wall posts written by the subject or by various friends. Each post reflects by the author’s “icon,” generally a photo or some kind of graphic. These “slices” function similarly to the Cubist painters’ various facets in projecting various aspects of a perceptual complex. As everything said here pertains to the rendering of any given subject, call it Cyber-Subject-Cubism.




Small slice of Stephen Rowe’s Facebook

Stream at a moment in time –

many more posts below

 

Then stepping further into Cyberspace, beyond his own rendering, each subject encounters a stream … actually a torrent of posts made by or to his friends or friends of friends: status updates, comments, inquiries, declarations, “Likes,” cloned content, links to web sites, new friend suggestions and invitations, reports on friends’ new friend formations, social games, etc. This Cyber-stream is managed by Facebook algorithms based on friend network architecture, expressed interests, recent subject behavior, etc. Beyond this managed Cyber-stream, a subject may often choose to peruse the data and graphics within various friends’ and friends’ of friends Wall and Information pages. Viewing each such information packet as a representational facet of the external world, we again see the parallel with Cubism. As this Cyber-Cubist rendering pertains to what the subject [account holder] sees looking out into Cyberspace, call it Cyber-Object-Cubism.

To summarize, Facebook offers a Cyber-Cubist rendering of each subject [account holder] which we call Cyber-Subject-Cubism, and a Cyber-Cubist rendering of each subject’s view of the external world which we call Cyber-Object-Cubism.

Implications for Artistic Exploration

The foregoing discussion has been metaphorical, but clearly suggests artists might explore Facebook [and more generally Cyberspace] through a Cyber-Cubist lens. What might that mean in practice? It is easiest to imagine two opposing viewpoints:

Georges Braque: The Candlestick, 1911

  1)  Whereas Cubism was constructive in augmenting its painted subjects’ renderings, the Cubist aspect of Facebook is destructive, its renderings tending to diminish one’s experience of the underlying human and social content. Facebook’s superficial Cyber-friendship interactions utterly pale beside “real life” social intercourse. Young people in particular are apt to know less and less of the difference, while excessive Cyber-social activity consumes time and energy otherwise available to more edifying human interaction and experience.

        In this case, facets of typical Facebook intercourse might be used as were the Cubist planes, to define subjects and objects, but negatively, in ways that suggest limiting the subject and his social experience.

2)       Facebook expands and enriches the subject’s universe. In this case, facets of typical Facebook intercourse might be shown as magnifying and illuminating the subject and his universe.

For (1) and (2) above, the most obvious applications would be in graphic art and sculpture, where most historical Cubist work resides, but one could imagine employing these elements along with other Facebook conventions in performance art and in conventional installations.

A more immediate application is to directly utilize unmediated Facebook renderings. The computer-art installation outlined below would present an accessible, fascinating, and profound exploration of Facebook renderings within various social strata: What does the Cyber-social space look like to people who are very different from me?

a.       Set up a bank of five computers, each offering direct access to a different Facebook account with but one limitation [see (f) below].

b.      The five Facebook account holders would have been solicited by the computer-artist so as to span demographic cross-sections. For instance, the computer artist might enlist a young urban working-poor mother, a top-tier university student, a middle aged middle class small town representative, a Christian preacher, and a Muslim professional.

c.       These five “subjects” do not participate in the installation or viewing in any way whatsoever.

d.      Instead, installation visitors sit down at the computers and surf each subject’s Facebook Wall, Information page, Facebook stream, and the subject’s friends’ and friends’ of friends Wall and Information pages.

e.       The five computers then constitute a virtual, dynamic gallery of the five Cyber-Subject and five Cyber-Object Cubist renderings: What does the Cyber-social space look like to people who are very different from me?

f.        It is absolutely vital that each computer session be engineered so that visitors can navigate and view its “Facebook space,” but cannot execute any change: i.e., cannot add or drop friends, post comments or links, etc.

                                                               i.      The five volunteer subjects’ accounts must be protected …

                                                             ii.      as well as the artistic experience: after all, the point is to see someone else per the Facebook lens, and visitor input would denigrate the integrity of the renderings.

In summary, this section suggests some ways in which Cyber-Cubism might manifest as an historically informed foundation for the artistic exploration of Facebook and Cyberspace. Given the millions of hours devoted to social media each day, these and other such explorations might someday inform a very important body of art.

Until the next post, know that the Angola area lakes region is an Art Region, and its towns are Art Towns!

Stephen Rowe currently serves as the Angola Regional Artists’ Guild publicity chairman and writes two additional blogs:
     ArtMissionary.blogspot.com
     OriGraphics.blogspot.com

Stephen welcomes correspondence of all sort per StephenRowe.OriGraphics@yahoo.com