CroshawHannah Week 9 Post: Reflecting on Yreina Cervantez' Art

Hello everyone, hope you’re having a great week 9 so far; I can’t believe the quarter is almost over! 

After this second round of presentations I wanted to look into and write a little bit about Yreina Cervantez; she caught my attention during the presentations because she went through UCLA’s Masters of Arts program and I was curious about learning more of her narrative of navigating the program, space, and teachers. Much of that wasn’t available to me but instead I found the interesting narrative of Cervantez working with SPARK to put up a mural, La Ofrenda, “under a bridge on 2nd and Toluca in downtown Los Angeles.”

The politics of her mural going up, and probably covering tags that were placed there from before, and then new tags completely covering, La Ofrenda, over time was interesting to learn about. The article was also interesting because it went into the technical aspects of SPARK restoring the mural at various stages. It showed me how big public works of art, like murals, are part of an ongoing restoration process after they’re made, particularly if they’re located in an ever-changing site that’s susceptible to other forces like tags and weather and sunlight. I assumed large pieces of art like murals would be around for a lot longer than other forms of art, probably because of the sheer size of most murals, but in reality they’re a lot more susceptible to change than a lot of other art is, that’s seemingly forever preserved in the white museum.

That’s why I think murals are a lot more interesting; they’re more reflective of humanity and societies that are under constant wear, tear, and change.

CroshawHannah Week 8 Post: Reflecting on Consuelo Jimenez-Underwood Art

Good afternoon everyone!

From our first round of presentations I was interested in looking into a few artists, but one of the artists that I was most interested in was Consuelo Jimenez-Underwood, who was presented by Sarah Veyna.

I was interested in the materials Jimenez-Underwood uses; from the presentation, these seemed to be mainly different yarns and fabrics which she uses to represent different multicultural and geological ties she has. The different materials she uses parallel the politics that they are about. Jimenez-Underwood writes on her website that she’s working with three different perspectives which are, “a reflection of personal border experiences: the interconnectedness of societies, insisting on beauty in struggle, and celebrating the notion of "seeing" this world through my tri-cultural lens.” She shows these different points of view by using different materials that, “reflect a contemporary hyper-modern sensitivity, are interwoven to create large-scale fiber art that is inspired in equal measures by land, politics and Spirit.” I think her artwork is beautiful and appealing but becomes much more complicated and beautiful upon reading more about her artwork through her website; I've included a link to that below which is where I've sourced information from.

http://www.consuelojunderwood.com/about.html

CroshawHannah Week 7 Sandra Eleta Photos

Hello All! Hope you had a great, relaxing long weekend. I celebrated my Grandma's 85th birthday with lots of extended family.

Also wanted to let you all know that I have some of my own artwork up in the New Wight Gallery across the Sculpture Gallery from us in the 2020 Undergraduate Juried Art Show, I'd recommend checking it out! My piece stems from my relationship with my Grandma and the passing of my Grandpa three years ago.

In class on week eight I'll be showing a short presentation of some of Sandra Eleta's photography. I've included the images I'll be showing in my presentation that day. Each of these photos is from a different series she's done.

2020CroshawHannah Stencil Blog Post: Dragon

For my stencil I’m going to be reworking a print I made while studying at Santa Barbara City College, which is a dragon I’ve created, drawn and redrawn many times in my artwork.

Formatting-wise, if the stencil becomes too detailed while including the whole body of the dragon, and peonies below, then I’ll rework the stencil to include his head, part of his antlers and part of his hands over the front and back covers of my sketchbook.

I love the dual reading this of mine has; dragons are usually quite large, powerful beasts, but this one definitely is a softy. I’ve drawn him flying, sleeping, gardening, and now I see this iteration to be in either a sleeping pose or meditation pose full of good, positive energy.

I didn’t think much about drawing peonies below at the time, besides really loving those flowers. Now, looking at it again, I love the complexity of peonies, and the multiple layers and petals that make them a somewhat messy, but beautiful flower.

I’ve attached below an image of one of my screenprints of my dragon.

Question for you all, what do dragons and peonies, or your favorite flower, mean to you and why?

2020CroshawHannah Week 5: Codex Lomas Garza: Pedacito de Mi Corazón

In my short essay on Carmen Lomas Garza, I was interested in analyzing her piece, Codex Lomas Garza: Pedacito de Mi Corazón, from 1992, as this piece shows Garza’s continued political art-making practice as an adult. In this piece, Garza uses moments between her family members to combine her own personal narrative in conjunction with a larger Mexican-American narrative. The Codex she created was a part of a show titled, The Chicano Codices: Encountering Art & the Americas which opened at San Francisco’s Mexican Museum from September 23 through November 29, 1992.(Cortez, Carmen Lomas Garza, 61.) This piece, and the art show, were organized as a protest show against America’s celebration and economic endeavors that took advantage of the Quincentenary, the 500-year anniversary of the European encounter with the Americas. Artists like Garza, “viewed the Quincentenary as an opportunity to address the historical omissions and to reinsert themselves and the groups they represented into the timeline of the hemisphere.”(Cortez, Carmen Lomas Garza, 61.) She uses gouache and watercolor to create her own codex, remembering the violent actions of colonizers’ burning existing codices in the Americas or stealing and sending surviving books back to Europe for private collections. Throughout she draws plants and animals used for specific medicinal properties, information passed down through Mexican-American culture, and incorporates symbols like the ollin, an Aztec symbol that represents, ‘change,’ or, ‘movement,’ followed by a passage Garza wrote herself that, “touches upon history, culture, and the implications of the past and present.”(Cortez, Carmen Lomas Garza, 64.) Garza continues to add details to her work that simultaneously make it personal narrative, such as the scene of her mother applying aloe to Garza’s brother’s sunburnt skin on panel 6, and her grandfather’s hands harvesting cactus pads on panel 4. The fluid combination of personal and communal narrative makes Garza’s piece exceptionally accessible; it’s an effective balance that roots her stories within her art in truth, but that also speak to a larger audience.

I'd like to add on a more informal note that I've been a really big fan of Carmen Lomas Garza's work so far. I enjoy painting scenes that end up combining lots of different characters and figures interacting with each other in different settings, but Garza's work is inspiring to me because of the very specific settings she uses, the details she'll include in her paintings, and the cultural specificity that some of those details hold. Her Codex is inspiring because it functions similarly to her paintings in that it lays out a lot of interesting information and personal experiences but in a different kind of organization of information than a painting.

2020CroshawHannah Extra Credit: Gardening Version of La Virgen de Guadalupe

2020CroshawHannah Week 3: Yolanda M. Lopez, Tres Mujeres/Three Generations series, 1976.

One piece by Yolanda M. López that shows López’s interests in depicting, “normal,” Chicana women are her pieces, Self Portrait, Mother, and Grandmother, from her Tres Mujeres/Three Generations series from 1976. These charcoal drawings, each 4x8’, depict a self portrait of López, standing with most of her weight on her back leg and her hand on her hips, staring straight at the viewer. She’s wearing flip flops, and a baggy shirt and set of pants. Her mother is sitting, with her legs crossed at the ankles, one hand resting on her lap and her right elbow props her up, as she also looks at the viewer at an angle. Her grandmother is depicted standing straight-on to the viewer, her hands clasped in front of her, her feet straight under her hip-line. For the other drawings, “each model was asked to copy the original poses of the other two women,” which explores how each chicano woman in López’s family present themselves outside of the virgin, mother, whore Chicana stereotypes.

 

2020CroshawHannah Sandra Eleta

Hello all, I hope everyone is having a great second week of school. I’m choosing Sandra Eleta to research, as I immediately thought her photos to be arresting and beautiful. I hope to find out about her artistic practice and the relationships she may or may not have with the people she’s taking photos and portraits of, as taking ethical yet beautiful photos of people is a complicated and important process.

-Hannah

2020CroshawHannahIntroduction

Hello all, I’m a little late to the game for introductions! My name is Hannah Croshaw, I’m a fourth year Art Major at UCLA and transferred from Santa Barbara City College two years ago. Pronouns she/her/hers, and I’m a Cancer, born June 25, 1997. I was intending to minor in Art History here, but decided I’d be happier getting to put more work into my art classes since I’m only here for two years.

I grew up going to public schools with largely latino/latina/white student bodies, and part of my interest in this course is to learn more about my peers and neighbors. From just this past class, I’ve already been thinking more about how my non-white peers may have been at certain disadvantages that I wasn’t aware of. I’d like to continue to have conversations about how we could better our education systems, from elementary schools to universities, as I’m interested in becoming a teacher later in life.

As an artist here at UCLA I’ve spent most of my time in the painting and ceramics studio, although I also love working with printmaking, photography, collage, journaling, and many other kinds of art. 

I have to update it with recent works, but you can see some of my artwork at hannahcroshaw.com or add me on Instagram @hannahcroshaw