Gallery Response Essay 1

Julianna Menjivar-Sanchez, Play, Read, Coughs

 

Ashley Lyon, Wellspring

Ashley Lyon, Mother and Child

Two artworks that I found compelling in the exhibition of Extraordinary Still Life is the work done by Ashley Lyon, Mother and Child and Wellspring. I liked both of her artworks, especially when she was talking about it at the exhibition. I felt like I could relate to both of her still life art works. In the Ashley Lyon’s work, Wellspring, she talks about she remade her grandmother’s quilt which was an heirloom. It was a sentimental artwork that she did which she made from clay. Her work looks so real, based on the paint she used as well, which absorbs light. This artwork relates to our class theme of identity because it was Ashley’s art that relates to her family. Her grandmother’s quilt resembles a maternal lineage within her family because she talked about how knitting was something they had to learn and do. In her second artwork, Mother and Child, I found this art piece to be my favorite out of the whole exhibition. Maybe because I am a mother and I can relate to her explanation of this art piece, I found it the most interesting. Ashley made this piece as well from clay. She mentioned that she had just found something to imitate, and it happened to be a rope because she was experimenting with clay. She had not thought of it relating back to her relationship with her child. But towards the end, she did because she said it can tie back into how a rope can show the relationship between motherhood. I took it as motherhood not being a perfect line, but instead an adventure going up and down, and even through. This piece relates to the identity of motherhood and one that I can relate to because I feel as my motherhood journey has had many ups and downs, but something that I am learning from. And especially knowing that I will never have a “perfect line” because no journey of motherhood is ever like that.

The selfie I chose to display is things that relate to my son and I. I chose to put the things he plays with the most and uses on top of something that I do with him, such as the cutting board in my kitchen. The things displayed are his food toys, car toys, pencils, a book, a fake plastic knife, and his medicine. We had both of our things in this picture. Things that he also imitates me on, such as cutting food with his fake food and knife and reading and writing. I chose the quote, “Photographs furnish evidence.” by Susan Sontag because this photograph shows the evidence of my motherhood. The good and hard times- playing and dealing with times when he’s sick. Another quote is “The desire to create images has never not felt powerful, something Weems understood from the first time she held her own camera.” from “How Carrie Mae Weems Rewrote the Rules of Image-Making” by Megan O’Grady. I like this quote and can relate it to my work because ever since taking this class, I realize how much I have felt powerful in my own identity. The identity I choose to highlight most in this class is being a mother and I feel like with taking these selfies, my power to share these pictures that are not always the best side of me, is something I look forward to. This ties in with my next quote, “… and a handful of Weems’s pictures are nearly definitive artistic representations of motherhood…” from “How Carrie Mae Weems Rewrote the Rules of Image-Making” by Megan O’Grady. In Carrie Mae Weem’s, the Kitchen Table Series, she shows a lot of roles that women have to take on at home, especially one being the role of motherhood. She is showing her daughter in these photos how to do things and what others expect of them. Not just in these series, but in her other artwork, most of it relates to motherhood. Her artistic representations of motherhood can also be seen in my version through my still life photograph. Even though you do not see myself or my son, you see the key elements that is used in every day life of mother and child- reading, writing, playing, eating, and being taken care of with sickness. The last quote I would like to use is, “…but with still photographs the image is also an object, lightweight, cheap to produce, easy to carry about, accumulate, store.” by Susan Sontag. This quote relates to my photograph because although we went as a class to an exhibition to view art pieces by various artists that is still life, even photographs can portray that same feeling and meaning even if it is not physical. But yet somehow, although we cannot touch the things in the photograph, we can touch the photo and store it wherever we like. We can feel emotions that we see through the photo that we can do when touching things physically. Such as with Ashley Lyon’s art pieces that are an actual object that we can touch, we can also photograph it and get the same meaning and feeling as seeing it in person. And although there is a difference between my work and hers, the photographs still do both pieces justice to get the point across of what we deem important and how it relates to our identity.