1st Artist talk for October

Until I heard Penelope Umbrico speak I totally did not agree with the use of appropriation. I know there are a lot of artists using it and that it was wide spread throughout the art photography industry, but I thought it was a cheap and easy way for artist to gather images. I thought it was essentially stealing especially when the original artist didn't know you were using their image. I had seen Umbrico's work before and enjoyed it. Had even done a favorable artist presentation on her, but still I didn't understand the need to use others images when it can be so easy to create some yourself. That was until I heard her speak. I know see how the use of appropriation is essential to her work. I think the turning point was when she explained that she could have gone and taken all those images of suns but it wouldn't have added anything to her work it was showing the masses idea of the sun that gave her work such power. I guess I had never looked at appropriation from that point of view and now see how powerful it can be.

Out of all the work she showed I think I was most captivated by her Suns From Flicker. I would be interested in finding out if one of my suns was used in her work, not likely given the shear volume of suns on Flickr, but still interesting.




This piece caught my attention not only because of the use of mass appropriation, but because of it's shear size and the colors that slap you in the face. The one thing that slightly turned me off not only about this piece, but about Umbrico herself is how she seemed to dismiss the feelings of the artist who possibly helped her with this work. When she was talking about the Flickr forum discussing her work and about the comments people were leaving I thought her dismissal of their feelings or maybe even a little anger toward them was inappropriate. I mean these are the people who helped make your work possible, I don't believe she should have stopped using the images because as she said no one would be able to find their sun among all of hers, but I think she should have showed a little more gratitude or at least acknowledged their feelings or been a little empathetic.

Listening to her speak about her work was very enlightening and I was most surprised to find out that the concept behind one of her pieces was not what I had always been told. I had always been told that her Mirrors work was a look at the differences between class aimed marketing. That the work examined both low end and high end catalogs and showed the differences in what if anything was reflected in the mirrors.




Needless to say I was interested to find out that the real meaning behind the piece was more about the disappearance of self and how the marketers try to place you in the middle of the room by showing you what is behind you. I think this is interesting not only because of the new meaning behind the work, but also how the concept gets changed from artist to viewer and how drastically it can be changed.