Ethan's Experiments

Untitled, Ethan Swanson, 2022     I am really happy with how this project turned out, out of what art I have made, this is what I am most proud of. With other projects I feel like I haven't completely gotten what I wanted out of it personally, or people didn't totally react to is how I wanted. But this one was really meaningful all around. It was so wonderful to make something that feels super personal to me, but also exists on its own without being connected to me.      It was so fun to learn how to make plaster casts (thanks again Charlie :) ), as well as figuring out how to use the space. The physicality of  putting it together was also so rewarding, I feel that there was a lot of meaning created by putting it together alone, with my own hands. Using direct animation was also so fun, and I really look forward to doing it again. Although I love film, I often find that it is kind of distanced because of the use of a camer...

     I still have a lot of uncertainty with Rachel Whiteread's art. Some pieces I absolutely love for their odd aesthetic and impenetrability, but some are just so aloof that I don't know where to go with them. I am especially frustrated because as far as I know she hasn't developed her style since the 1990's. While her early work is really exciting because of how it captures emptiness and relates to memory, her later stuff just feels pretty repetitive and uninspired. I hope we get to see some more stuff from her in the future that is more provocative. That being said, I really love her work and would love to see her pieces in person, I feel like in a gallery/museum setting they would be really imposing and off-putting, and people would get more out of them.       I think her work also provokes a lot of thought between what is sculpture and what is installation. I think most people would regard her work as sculpture, I probably would to for most of her...

Orville Peck as The Blue Boy, Andrew Norris, 2021        Andrew Norris' talk was really great, now I really want to go see his show. I love how his art is dealing directly with celebrity culture as well as art history. It is really subversive how he places these queer people into paintings that originally re-inscribed traditional heteronormative viewing/identity. I connected a lot to these paintings because of the celebrities he was using, especially Orville Peck, who is about the only country musician I ever listen too. The style of portraiture Norris is doing is also interesting because of how indebted it is to the old masters. I love the juxtaposition of this very historical, serious style of painting with the uncharacteristic figures he puts in them. These paintings feel like something that traditional academics would hate (I know he mentioned his teachers in school not liking him painting celebrities or comic book characters), which I really like.    ...

A Teenager with Promise, 2017, Alexandra Bell     Alexandra Bell's convocation was really cool, she has an insight into news media that I haven't seen before, and it's cool that Lawrence brought an artist with overtly political work to campus. Her Counternarratives are so interesting because they so clearly show the bias that newspapers have that many people don't see. I love how they are shown first with all the annotations, and then in a redacted and corrected version, so that the artistic process becomes part of the finished piece. That allows a lot of clarity and transparency in the pieces that helps their impact really land. I also just really like how her marginalia looks aesthetically, bright red writing on white background.      Relating to our installation projects, her artwork makes me think a lot about the use of space. Partly from how big they are, which kind of forces you to pay attention to them (and the fact that they used to be pasted onto walls...

     There's still a lot that I don't know for sure, but I have a general idea of what I want to do for my installation. I plan on having it in the back left corner of the Mudd Gallery, but any small room would probably work. I originally wanted to make plaster casts of arms, legs, faces, etc to arrange around the room, but I don't know how to do anything with plaster and I think that would take too long, so I'm planning on using paper mache. This will be a much quicker and cheaper option will give me an idea of what the installation will look like if I ever get to do it with plaster. I am going to arrange these body parts on the floor as well as on a table/chair. I also want to take some black and white pictures of myself and edit them to look ghostly and have pieces missing, these will be hung on the walls on either side of the corner.  Subway, George Segal, 1968 I really like these pieces by George Segal, the loneliness fo the figure in this disconnected space is ...

      I really loved making our installation piece. The freedom we had to do whatever was so liberating. I was so impressed with how we had a bunch of different themes emerge from all the random stuff we brought, and how the piece felt pretty cohesive overall. The piece to me has a feeling of a picnic gone wrong. The front half especially is full of such vibrant colors and flowers, feeling inviting at first glance. Then as you look at it longer and read the writing on the walls, it feels a little more ominous. The back on the other hand takes this aggression further, with the book on the wall yelling at you along with all the 'Not for Sale" signs. It felt very current to make something that also seemed to be commenting on the environment. All the greens in the room and the flowers coming out of the trash definitely added to that, along with the fact that the possible consumerism of our 'store' was aborted by the 'Not For Sale' signs. I think it would be int...

Wander     Soundcloud Link:  https://soundcloud.com/user-855245494/wander-sound-experiment-final?si=6316b1e59f964a6a8b2a88f1d800afa0     Since I have very little experience with making music, I wanted to try it again for my final project. My intent with this piece was to still make something dark like my last experiment, but to make it more cohesive and musical. The beginning of the piece opens with a lot of random sounds, because I wanted it to feel like the music was coming together, making itself. I made this piece longer because I want the audience to sit with it, and get into its mood gradually.     By making this project, along with all the other projects we have done in this class, I am participating in what McLuhan calls the "Global Village", the idea that the world is so interconnect now that the world is once again a small village,  culturally speaking. For example this final project is participating with that, because it is uploaded to ...

  Untitled No. 1, Ethan Swanson      While it may have taken a lot longer than it should have to print our photos (That dang printer!), overall I think it was really worth it to be able to see a physical version of our photographs. I really liked the look of my photos, and they really feel different on paper and displayed than on a computer. I the texture that the printer adds is really nice. And displaying them professionally with lights and frames was also really fulfilling. The gallery space really directs the eye and makes you focus on the artwork in a different way.      Making the book may have been one of my favorite things we did in class. The process of arranging the photos in a sequence gave a different mood to my photos, and gave an opportunity to tell a visual "story". I also liked arranging the photos in different ways directionally, so that the viewer has to work with the book, and the act of viewing isn't a ...

Allen Ginsberg, Prague, 1965 Link to my presentation:  https://lawrenceu-my.sharepoint.com/:p:/g/personal/swansone_lawrence_edu/EQwAhjOV1ApNjBTjQqdwswwB6TD6mPHKhnJNeTEp-hBMgw?e=aeKxzr     I had a really great time researching Ginsberg. I was initially interested in him because he was a part of the Beat Generation, who were always interesting because they seemed like  photo-hippies. But upon learning more about him, I realized what an incredible artist and person he was. Howl was especially meaningful to me, because of its righteous rage against parts of American society that still exist today. As a queer person, it was also wonderful to hear about a man who was able to be fairly openly gay in  American society at that time. I'm sure he faced a lot of persecution, and it's amazing he was able to have the cultural impact he had. His poetry is also some of the best I've ever read, and is so incredibly emotional, which is why I chose to share so much of it in m...

Royal Proclamation of Canada (front), Hand cut calico letters on antique quilt, 2017                 "When information is brushed against information..." (McLuhan, 76)     Gina Adams' work is a remarkable interplay between clear illustration, and abstract patterning.  When the newly made (but history containing) letters interact with the vintage quilts she uses, her quilts show both injustices and the intersectionality of American identity. New information rubs onto the old to create something unique.      I found her Treaty Quilts really interesting conceptually. She could've chosen to make her own quilts to put the letters on, or some other material completely. But she chose to use these vintage, very American style, quilts. So there is this interplay between the letters which are about broken treaties and injustices done onto Native Americans, and these handmade quilts that are objects of comfor...

Experiment Link:  https://soundcloud.com/user-855245494/soundscape-experiment?si=f1216a12cb444d60becf68f61968ac3a     "In general we feel more secure when things are  visible , when we can 'see for ourselves'." (McLuhan, 117)     The above quote emphasizes what I wanted to do when creating this project. I wanted to try to make something musical (because I haven't done that before) but I mostly wanted to create a piece of sound that would conjure some sort of imagery in listeners heads. I think the  interplay between visual and auditory is really interesting, especially when they overlap. So I wanted this sound to indicate something visual even though it isn't.      I made this project out of instruments that Garageband  already had, using the virtual midi keyboard on my computer. It was really fun to play and try to put together a little 'song'. I really enjoyed adding effects using the peddle board options and messing around w...

  My Flickr Blume No. 2 "Something is happening here and you don't know what it is, do you, Mister Jones?" (Bob Dylan, 1965)          I just took this quote on a very literal level instead of its total meaning. I like the idea of something that is happening that is under everyones radar, so that's what I tried to do with the abstraction in the photos. I like making people see things in a way that they can't with their naked eye.      I took all these photos on a walk in the evening this past weekend. I focused mostly on making more abstract pictures because that is what I generally like to do in my art. To support that I manipulated them quite a bit in photoshop. I had a lot of fun in messing in the 'Curves' menu, I found that was a really good way to mess with them (especially in black and white). Overall I think that most of my photos are  successful, about 16 of them I'm happy with. There were some I included ...

    My approach to the project arose out of this idea from a shot I already had (it's not in the video) involving light and a person interacting with it. From there I just filmed shots that I found interesting relating to that. As in all my work, the structure changed almost completely during editing, and the video you're seeing is not what I set out to make. But I am happy (sort of) with what happened.      I have to admit that a lot of what McLuhan says in this book goes over my head. But I do relate a lot personally to his idea that life is moving too fast for us to comprehend or society to get a handle on. This idea of going backwards while we simultaneously go forward is something that I tried to incorporate into this video. I tried to mess with time a bit by using slow motion and jump cuts. The last shot of this video tries to tie the rest of it together and comment on the artificiality of our world. Sometimes life feels completely mean...

Justice MMIWG, Valaria Tatera, 2019-2021     I found Valaria Tatera's talk incredibly moving and informative. I had absolutely no idea Enbridge pipeline 5 existed or that Wisconsin even had residential schools. I think growing up in Wisconsin gave me the impression that most of the injustices meted out against native peoples were in other places, it was worrying to find out the same happened here. Although sadly it's not that surprising.      My complete ignorance on the topic shows just how deficient the school system is in the US, where the majority population can just choose to leave out the more unpleasant parts of history that make them look bad. This is why Tatera's art is so necessary, not only is it a healing process for herself, which would be important enough by itself, it makes people focus on what  they'd rather ignore.   "Whence did the wond'rous mystic art arise, of painting SPEECH and speaking to the eyes? T...

    My name is Ethan Swanson (He/Him) and I'm a second year Film Studies and Art History double major. I work primarily in experimental film but I'm currently writing a screenplay because I want to make some narrative short films. Eventually, I'd like to be a director and make feature length movies. Summer Evening, Edward Hopper, 1947      I tend to like art that is on the darker side of things, so lately I've been really interested in Edward Hopper. There is something melancholic/pessimistic about his version of Americana that I really like. This particular painting really effects me because the people in it seem to be trapped in a conversation even though the background is so open and undefined. I also think about this piece a lot because I envy how well he uses light here (there's not a great image of this painting online so I'd recommend looking at a print, the colors are a little off here), and I hope to be able to have lighting that good in my films s...