Cultural Event #5

I had the opportunity to go to the American Visionary Art museum when I went home for spring break. I live only half an hour North of Baltimore, so I've been to this museum before, but they had a new exhibition that I'd never seen before. The exhibition is called "Home and Beast," and it's all about artwork relating to animals and the concept of "home." There is also a permanent collection throughout the museum, some of which I've seen in the past. The thing I like so much about the Visionary Art museum is that none of the contributing artists have been formally trained in their medium. In fact, many of them are either physically or mentally handicapped, which makes the magnitude of their work all the more fascinating. I think that this is especially true for the Home & Beast exhibit. The idea of the "home" is a common theme amongst all people, artist or not, and I think this is the reason why it fits so well in the museum. Many of the exhibitions center on archetypal themes such as war, aging, the family, etc. The art seems to have more meaning when it's created by someone who wouldn't normally create art...to me, it makes it seem more special.

Cultural Event #4

On Sunday, April 22nd, I went to the Annemarie sculpture garden with my mom. When we first decided to visit the garden, I was expecting topiary structures or something but I realized pretty quickly that the whole idea of the garden was to put man-made art in a natural setting. One of my favorite parts of the garden is a gigantic walkway that winds through the woods and ends in a big platform overlooking a sculpture of a keyhole. At first I thought that the winding form of the walkway was purely artistic, and then I noticed the fact that there were holes cut in the planks so that trees could grow through. The whole bridge was made so that no trees would have to be cut down for its construction, which I think gives a whole new earth-friendly meaning to the walkway. Seeing this kind of artwork out in the open is a little bit unexpected at first, since you'd usually see this kind of art in a gallery or a museum. Keeping it in a natural setting such as the garden, though, makes it seem much more alive and dynamic. I really enjoyed seeing the garden, and hopefully I'll be able to go back with friends if they change/add to their collection.

Cultural event #3

The third cultural event I attended was the dance show. Since I was in the actual show, I attended all four showings (April 19 - 21). Although I might be kind of biased towards the show since I was in it, I still think it was a very good performance. There were a few different cultural dances like greek dance, belly dance, scottish, and irish. I think that these provided a good balance for the more popular hip-hop dances, and made the show into more of an art piece than just a bunch of people moving around onstage. A lot of time and hard work goes into the choreography of these dances; before being a part of it, I probably never would have considered the dance show to be artistic. But after seeing all of the dances in their entirety and watching how the lighting enhanced them, I can see how dance is really an art form.

Cultural event #2

I haven't blogged about cultural events in a REALLY long time, but I went to the Mandrake back in April. I liked it a lot, i think that it had a good story line and it was pretty funny at times. But the most interesting part about it was the fact that there were pretty much no female characters in the entire cast. There were women playing the parts of men in some cases, but the script was very limited when it came to female characters. Although the set was quite beautifully constructed, the one artistic element of the play that I didn't really appreciate was the use of masks. I understand that they had their place in the play, but i think that they obstructed the facial emotions of the actors too much. Overall I think it was a good performance.

final website

I finished my website! I think it's pretty good, especially the section about the artist of the month, Ecila Attiplov =)

Here it is!