PUMP UP THE VOLUME!;

Pump Up The Volume!
January 27th, 2016

Showing at Sacramento State University
January 27th - February 26th, 2016
Else Gallery in Kadema Hall
Visiting Hours: Monday-Friday 12pm-4:30pm

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Pump Up the Volume! is an exhibition showing the works of artists Jane Dickson and Joe Lewis. It is described on the flyers as a celebration of different "aspects of the global hip-hop culture movement from the earliest moments they shared in the South Bronx," which is a remarkably cool story I heard during their talk after the reception.

Before going to the reception and artists' talk, I decided to check out the gallery exhibition before class that day. . .

When you first walk into the gallery space, you're senses are first exposed to the hip hop/rap music playing. It's not too loud, but it provides enough to welcome yourself into a different space. You then see the different portraits, images, and vinyls hanging around the room. It's very urban. Something I'm very comfortable in since I really enjoy rap and hip hop at this point in my life. You don't feel like you're in the Bronx, but you definitely feel like you're in a hardcore, cool ass, funky place.

Pump Up the Volume! really does give off the feeling of an evolution of hip hop and the music really does help move that along if you stay there long enough to listen to a few songs that are playing there while being accompanied by the works. There really isn't a coherence in an evolution while you move through the space, but that really shouldn't matter. They all go together and present this feeling of--ALL THIS. IT IS HIP HOP CULTURE.

I loved how the space just looked.

Now, when I arrived in the afternoon, none. NONE of the works had titles somewhere in the room, which I was okay with in some ways. It should be presented in that way. When I arrived in the evening, they were bunched in awkwardly in stacks.

UNVEILING THE SOUL;

Unveiling the Soul
OPENING NIGHT.

An Artistic Performance of Hellenic Texts, Dance, Poetry, Music and Andonia Cakouros's Original Writing.

Unveiling the Soul was an autobiographical production of Professor Andonia Cakouros. It celebrated her body of work in means of her own works, her culture, and her devotion to theater. She tells that 'Unveiling the Soul is an authentic representation of my soul's journey in my work with my students, my individual artistic pursuits and my personal search for knowledge, compassion and Agape (the highest form of love).' This production also is her last piece of work here at the university as she retires from her teaching position.

Upon walking in, you see the display case of different pictures from Andonia Cakouros' time here at Sacramento State and some things that make up a part of her life..And a gorgeous head shot from her younger years.

The usher would then give you a program, as custom, and an LED candle. The candle we were to turn on at a specific point in the show. The stage floor looked like this. It looks like a fractured piece of a seal, plate, or any found Grecian artifact.

This production was divided into eight sections celebrating different parts of her life that impact her soul accompanied by authentic traditional music from Greece. Starting off, the eleven part Greek Chorus, dressed in off-white/manilla colored togas that had the iconic drapery of Grecian statues, walked around in a circle then literally "unveiled the soul," unwrapping Cakouros from a brown shroud as they moved around her, never losing eye contact.

The sections themselves moved through the different parts of her soul that went from cultural, religious to deeply personal revelations.
As they transitioned to the other parts of her life, they changed the from different color lightings to suit the section. As they moved through to another section, they used blue lights and water sounds to show a new movement. Sections in 'Ancient Greek' & 'Christian',  fourteen candles were brought out. Eleven for each member of the chorus, one for Andonia, herself..and I forget what the other two were for. She recited monologues from Orestes in Greek and The Bacchae and sung Greek Orthodox hymns and poems in Greek as well accompanied by the audience's candles as if we were in church.

It was the last few sections of Unveiling the Soul that I really loved because how deeply emotional it became. We saw what made up her soul culturally and religiously. It was the Ancestors section that

Pre-show since we can't take pictures during it,
but proof that I got a candle. HAHA.

smoothly transitioned without water we saw the symbolism of our still lit candles. For each candle, I think, she was naming off her ancestors as well as recite more poems.
She then, hit us all with a big slap of emotion. Right before Mother's Day too. She has a lament dedicated to her parents. First talking about her father who died right when she started teaching here at Sacramento State and all the memories and emotions she feels then moves onto her mother. As she finishes off, she mourns and sobs as the chorus come up and surround her with embrace.

She recites two more poems, each for an unborn son and unborn daughter and the "whatifs" connected to them. How she takes on her students as her children. It was quite heartwarming, yet sad. Right when you start to cry and relate to her and take on her emotion as your own, she tells of her revelation and liberations of Agape. How she is complete.

It ends with so much song and dance, you went from the saddest part to immediate celebration and it just makes you smile. They dance in a circle as one, yelling "OPA!" and spinning around and rejoicing.

The fluidity of the production did need some work. If I didn't recognize the monologue from The Bacchae, I would've been lost of what was going on until it reached her listing her ancestors. All in all, unraveling to her inner identity outside of her being a professor was really intimate.

I came into the production thinking that it sounded really boring and that I was only here to support my three friends Tara, a part of the Greek Chorus, Miranda, who was an Assistant Stage Manager, and Liam (again), who was a part of the technical team. Honestly, it surprised me to how quickly in an hour I went through all my emotions and ended it on a happy dancey mood. Andonia, from her pictures scared me to what kind of woman she is. I can tell from this production that she has a lot of passion in what she loves to do and what makes up her soul.

Tara, little me, and my friend Colleen.
It's Tara's first college show! Congrats love!

I was too shy to talk to Andonia and she was getting a lot of
attention from everyone, but I did have the opportunity to tell her
that I really liked her production. The smile on her face
showed the gratitude of my attendance and that was good enough for me.

AVENUE Q @ SACRAMENTO STATE;

[DISCLAIMER: I apologize for not having pictures of the show. I was sitting in the very front and I find it would have been rude to every so often take a picture. Again, I apologize, but see it for yourself and experience the wonders!]

On Wednesday, April 8th, I joined a large group of my friends to support our friend Liam in the opening night of Avenue Q.


Avenue Q: The Musical is..well, a musical type play that features people and puppets alike separated into two acts. It can be described as a "Sesame Street for Adults." You get the full exposure to what you sort of remember from Sesame Street. The serious issues, some comic relief, and even some videos or visuals on the sides of the theater. The only difference is that this type of show portrays the life after graduating college and the social issues and anxieties individuals encounter in the "REAL WORLD."

The main character, Princeton, who just graduated college with a BA in English and trying to find his purpose, or at least what makes him special, in life, more so "What do I do now after college?" besides getting a job. While looking for a place to live, he works his way down from Avenue A(Rather pricey) all the way down to Avenue Q, cheap, affordable, and not so run-down as we should imagine that Avenue Z would be. It features an array of residents: a  kindergarten aide puppet, named Kate Monster, a couple of roommates, a monster upstairs who invests his time and money into watching pornography, an interracial couple, and the building supervisor, Gary Coleman, as played by a woman.

They all together tell each other their ambitions and even try to attempt with issues. Sometimes, decisions Princeton tries to make are persuaded to go the other way by a couple of characters called the Bad Idea Bears. Their enthusiasm and cute and cuddliness persuade Princeton to at first use rent money to buy beer, drink, and other things. They added comic relief to some very serious issues just because they're so darn cute and happy all the time.


Upon reading the handed out program, the cast went through a two-week puppetry boot camp to learn how to handle the puppets. Might I say, they did a wonderful job. From what I've learned from blog posts and documentaries about Sesame Street, when kids and adults who grew up with the show, they zone out or don't even pay attention to the actors at all. The cast put a lot of moment and emotion into these puppets that you forget they're being handled by an actual person.

This theatrical production was my first ever at the University and it was something quite amazing! Especially that I had a friend in the theater department playing the Blue Bad Idea Bear (HI, LIAM). Although there were some microphone-timing issues, and the music was a tad bit too loud to hear the actors, it was an amazing show and I highly recommend it.  I was exposed to Avenue Q before within my household.My brother sings the songs all the time and without context they were confusing and rather inappropriate.

RESPONSE # 9: WHITE WALLS, GLASS CEILING;

Thesis:
"And yet despite the outward appearance of fair-mindedness, in some ways women remain disadvantaged as artists" (109).
Regardless of just physicality's of being fair like just being talented or great, women still have  some disadvantages in their successes as artists.

1)"If this fact entails even a slight bias in terms of which gender gets taken seriously, it might seriously affect who sells and thereby which artists go on to glory"(110). The fact that there is a wealth gap between male and female artists as well as a predominately male market, affects how the said wealth is distributed. This may affect the artist in question and their future.


2) "For women, the key kink in the system, however, seems to occur between art school--where they are generally through to be at parity, if not in the majority--an initial contact with the system of gallery representation, where the number plummets. It seems, then, that a lot rides on understanding the mechanisms by which artists come to show at a gallery"(111).
The  disadvantages start some place between art school and when the women start to be represented by the gallery. At that point, you see that the number of women being represented drop due to their networks and connections to get to be represented. It's the efforts and hoops they have to jump through to be noticed.


3)"In an age of escalating inequality, just because women are more visible than ever before in leadership roles does not meant that the lives of the great masses of women are necessarily better" (113). The population of women are gaining status and newer opportunities, but that does not mean that in this day and age that discrimination in other forms will be gone and nor will the lives of women improve.

There still is a glass ceiling present in the gallery, but it's not completely closed off. More like an open sky light where women do have the same, or close to the same opportunities, but the grey area of how to achieve status or representation is still iffy. It affects me as an art student through the next steps after graduation. It's the age old scenario of, "Have I done enough to get me to where I want to be?" and "What do I do now and how do I get to where I want to go?" I may have the same opportunities as other people, but biases and personal discrimination may get in the way.

HERE AS EVERYWHERE;

ART OF THE SIXTIES AND SEVENTIES IN NORTHERN CALIFORNIA;


On Saturday, April 11th, I attended an Art History Symposium as a part of Sacramento State University's College of Art and Letters Festival of the Arts. Five professors were invited--one a keynote speaker and four other speakers encompassing a part of a larger focus. The focus was on art of the 1960s-1970s from the Greater San Francisco Bay Area and upward, or a period come to be known as the beginning of the counter cultures and protest movements.
As we learned in class, many different art styles do not necessarily come in waves in which one starts and another ends and so on. Styles and movements usually overlap or are inspired by other movements.

MICHAEL SCHWAGER, Professor at Sonoma State University
"Don't Hide the Madness: Bay Area Art in the 50s & 60s"

Professor Schwager, the keynote speaker, starts off the symposium with giving a talk about the 1950s-60s historic events and artworks and moves through in a sort of timeline that would lead up to the big movements of the 1960s & 70s come from. It makes sense to start off with the 1950s as I learned in my History of Popular Culture class because this is a time that would cause ripples in American society and culture that would lead up to different civil rights movements as well as the art movements. The 50s seed was planted to create a tree of movements in.

He starts by talking about the Korean War, he was born when the war ended, since a lot of his friend's parents were in or seeing the changes that would spark the changes. Post WWII culture booms around this time and popular culture follows the consumer culture. Families would be surrounded by T.V. and advertisements, a "nuclear family" with no pun intended. He also brought up that the Beat Movement in San Francisco had had a major impact on the movements in the 1960s-1970s. Schwager would then, after giving you some background, give an example of an artist affected by the events like Wally Hendrick, who created an assemblage piece called Xmas Tree (1953), made of radios, various lights and bulbs with cords hanging out every which way, in a form of a Christmas tree. He joked that they used the tree every year during the season..I think he was serious. LOL.
Professor Schwager gave us a very extensive lesson on Bay Area artists I never knew about that I think are real cool.


NICOLAS G. ROSENTHAL
"Paintinga Cultural Resurgence: California Indian Artists in the 1960s and 1970s"

Professor Rosenthal had a short talk about a cultural revival in California Native American art in the twentieth century. In his twenty minute lecture, he discussed that the artwork being made preserved their past histories and their ceremonies and traditions.

Post WWII, these Native American artists are expanding into the art market, working outside of the "traditional" styles as well as commenting on contemporary issues and historical events. It is a marriage of their historic past experiences(or stories of their culture) and experiences of the artists themselves and their current involvement with their community.

He concentrated on the those Native American artists that lived here in the Northern California region  and had work in the 1960s-70s like Fritz Scholder, Frank La Pena, and Henry Fonseca--artists that I've been exposed to before in my Native American Art class last semester. These artists would use old images and symbols, myths and stories, and other reminders of their cultures in their paintings to bring contemporary issues up.

I thoroughly enjoyed the lecture, especially that this is something I want to make my specific concentration within the Art History field.

These two lectures together were very interesting and I learned a lot of new information. In addition to the new exposure, I was also able to apply previous knowledge from other classes about similar situations like the decades of protest, the counterculture against conformity of the Post WWII 1950s, and the contemporary arts of Native Americans.

There is one thing though. The whole time I was there, I knew Frank La Pena was there, an artist Professor Rosenthal was discussing in his lecture.

 I did not know I was sitting next to Frank La Pena the whole time. I felt awful foolish and slightly starstruck.

I asked him for a picture for my blog with some excitement and uneasiness, he seemed a tiny bit reluctant, maybe it's the fact maybe he didn't know what a blog was. Mr. La Pena awkwardly accepted my request anyway. I felt like I was meeting a very respected elder and was extremely nervous. 

LUMPEN: THE ARTIST PANEL;

MARCH 19TH, 2015
TIME: 6:30PM
LOCATION: MARIPOSA 1001



On this one Thursday night, I attended a panel discussing the LUMPEN installation with local Sacramento/ Davis artists, Ellen Van Fleet and Julia Couzens. The idea for the show first began about a year ago for a research project by Professor Elaine O'Brien while reaching out to friend. Only being familiar with Van Fleet's 2-D artworks, O'Brien was mesmerized by pictures of her previous  conceptual works from the 1960s-70s. It was this artwork that inspired her to bring these works back to life.  In Couzen's works, there is so much color, texture and line. There was a whimsy in her approach to bundles and a fine semi-logical way of assembling these bundles. Both works presented the uses of crafts, like sewing and basket weaving. They also take a

At the panel, both artists discussed their previous works and how it lead up to the installation on campus. It all started with Ellen Van Fleet.

Van Fleet, started with a story of how she got into her art work or style while working the gift wrapping counter at a store that sold items made by blind people (not to be confused with gift wrapping for people that are blind). She enjoyed the movement of the tissue paper, its translucence, and how it breathes when you wave it around.

"I'm fairly simple and really curious. I want to make an idea that isn't laborious in a simple and most direct way." At the same time, she showed an image of a leaning tower of tissue paper with some dragging on the ground. "It moves well with people in the exhibition space," explaining that the movement of the people go along with movement of the paper.

She showed us a bunch of pictures from her other installation and conceptual works in the 1970s. One was similar to the Bowerbird's Sister work installed at the university and a picture of a chicken. She explained that the picture was of a sleeping chicken. She had a show where she would hypnotize chickens and learned to do so as a kid growing up in Eureka.
Van Fleet does not really have anything planned out, at least not totally explaining she likes "food for the eye" meaning something pleasuring to the eye.

Julia Couzens. What can I say about the talk about Julia. I'm not going to be rude, but I had a hard time understanding what her direction was.

Part of her references come from her drawings that remind the viewer of architectural drawings or drafts. They're geometric and quite logical. She has a lot of understanding of linear patterns and configuration.

Here's where it gets so confusing. She likes the discovery of the journey and works against herself and logic. She wants to disturb the control and her own compulsions. She, in my view, is a perfectionist, and isn't satisfied with her end results.

Couzen's bundles are cute and whimsical though. She enjoys just layering, covering, and weaving these little pieces of fabric and string and turns them around to see the backside's result, saying she has no control over it. She says it's slightly disturbed, messy and still maintains it's linear pattern.

Her assemblage of bundles at the installation have a linear energy, like a drawing. She sees them almost like a tableau or a stage set. Unfortunately, she didn't like how they were and finds them too constructed. She announced that she needed something to submit by the deadline. So the last time I saw it to right now, it's slightly different.

All together

REJECTION LETTER TO GREECE;

The British Museum’s director sent a letter to Athens announcing the trustees’ decision to “respectfully decline” a longstanding request to return the Elgin Marbles to Greece. -Hyperallergic.


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Full Article @ Hyperallergic