Moving Along...

As you know, things have been changing for me.

I got a 4.0 this semester, five A s!! I am excited about my future for the first time in 20 years...

I am moving on....

My future blog posts will be HERE ... feel free to subscribe. I will be focusing alot more on art and how it affects our world and how our world affects art.

Feel free also to add me to your friends in Facebook. The badge on the right will take you there.

Peace and love to you all, I send you the most positive of energies.

Vicki Bower ~ Artist, Mother, Student, Protagonist!

Goin to HVCC

So I haven't posted since last week bc my brain got it's butt handed to it on a platter.... um what a visual, I'll have to draw that.

Here's my school ID!

Anyway, I have Western Civ I, Intro to Gallery Management (which is my major), and Modern Art History and Survey to Art History II, which are online, and with the same teacher, but she is really good, so it seems doable...


My first Discussion question was basically "What is Art, what is it to you?" and then we had discuss three different materials that we were assigned. We also had to say which art classes we had already taken.


My answer:
Up until this point in my life I have defined “art” as a physical representation or material “placeholder” that enables the viewer to step inside the artist's perspective and experience a “slice of life”, whether it be a perfect apple, an agonizing scream, a calm, uniform cool palette of color, a sample of that era's architecture, or a political moment in history.

Hands on, as an artist, I see art as a medium of communication where I can share what's in my heart or head without fear or reproach or need for excuse, at times a selfish pleasure in just being myself with no regard for civilized or social restriction (alas, precious freedom!!).

I would say that my view of art relates closely to Britannica Online's ”use of skill and imagination in the creation of aesthetic objects, environments, or experiences that can be shared with others” as quoted in the intro of the “What is Art” Modernism Essay. For example, I had said art could be as simple as a representation of a cool palette of color, such as demonstrated in Josef Alber's “Homage to the Square: 'Ascending'” (shown on page xli of our textbook)- the colors chosen for this painting evoke the feelings of a foggy morning sunrise or the sun emerging from the rain; a cool/warm aesthetic experience unfettered by language or literal thought without representing any specific subject! As the gorilla says in the video, when comparing the painting elephant to the poo-throwing monkey, it's all about “Living the experience”.

From an art historian's point of view, I would argue that the same concepts prevail, but as a means of demonstrating history and the preservation of such in a visual sense... evoking an experience. A very simple example would be the exciting stormy hope of triumph that is experienced when viewing Emmanuel Gottlieb Leutze's “George Washington Crossing the Delaware”, 1851.

I am an artist who loves art, am a curious student of the arts, and who now might even be pleased to add “art historian” to that list. The more I understand how art has evolved through the years, and it's influence on society, science, and architecture, the more I appreciate it's history. This class and the Survey Art History II class I am also presently taking are my first art classes besides a 2D art class I took in 1987.

I'm gonna be a schoolkid :), AGAIN!

Hey, long time since I told you what I was up to. Yesterday I went to examine the possibilities of going back to school. I would like to get an Associates degree first but then Bachelor's in the field of Gallery Management.

I have been unemployed since February and applied to over 5 jobs a week and still have only had two interviews. I have an Associates in Computer Info Systems from 1997 and since I was a single momma raising two babies in the city, was never able to cement myself into a serious enough position to move up the corporate ladder, and now my 12 year old technology education is pretty much obsolete (insert every single-mom inner city sob story here, no one's gonna listen anyway).

So yeah, got my first degree basically for nothing, I thought, until I realized I could go back to school and transfer in all the core classes from the first go-'round and do it again. Why not? I'm only 40, and believe me, I saw ALL ages there when I was registering yesterday, many older than me (phew!!).

Many of you may think I'm slacking but alas, I am otherwise preoccupied with NOT GIVING UP and PRESSING ON and harnessing all the positive maniacal energy I can cram into one soul and sometimes am just too riled to even sit down. As I sit here, I look forward to dropping my daughter off at work and walking the 5+ miles round trip down to the Hudson River and back today for a "karmic recharge" and the possibility that a few of that fat cells that sooo love my ample bouncing booty might jump ship and lighten my load a little!

I apologize for not reading all your excellent blogs I so appreciate and of which I am a fan in the timely fashion I would like. I always learn great things and am definitely inspired by the beautiful people I have met through blogging and Twitter. I DO look at them when I get some free time and that does happen once in a while...

So please, as always bear with me for like most of you I am a rare bird that marches to the beat of her own stuttering rhythm and sometimes don't know what to do first. I am forging ahead with my big size 11 feet and cutting a path to happiness :)

Also I hope I can inspire some of you to NEVER GIVE UP because when you do, that's when you are defeated. No matter how down you are, no one can take away your conviction and perseverance, your sense of self and your contribution to humanity.
~ a "warm fuzzies" wave of "mmmmmmm..." :) ~
be good to yourselves....
Vicki