Artist Lecture -- James Siera

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I wasn't quite sure what to expect going into this lecture, but I got a real treat.  I'd only found out about the lecture the night before and didn't think to look up the artist.  On top of that, he was speaking on behalf of the painting and printmaking department. He was very charming man and the lecture was very conversational, which I appreciated especially with the arsenal of imagery he'd brought along with him. Siena had very specific titles for most of his work, but he also has allowed for friends and his son to name his images as well. I like this playful approach to naming. At first he said that didn't name his work because it could point a person in the wrong direction, but stopped caring because if the work was strong enough it could overcome any misdirection that a title may present.  I took this to heart especially since I have so much trouble naming my images.

It was also interesting how he takes an original concept and twists and manipulates it in on itself. For example with his lattice series (one version seen in image 3) he started in one direction and completely turned the idea on its head via rules he creates for himself for each project whether it be only using acute angles, not allowing lines to touch, or continuously dividing up the image.  These are rules he creates for himself. To me, it seems like they are little challenges or prompts for him to follow and explore. He even said that sometimes these twists and turns can be arbitrary.  These simple rules are very much the foundation of his work, but I think because we are so trained to find complexities and reasons for every  little thing, it can be difficult to grasp that there were no reasons for some of his rules except to simply exist as guidelines for a painting. Sometimes there are "phantoms" or tricks of the eye that appear in his images and while he didn't necessarily plan for them,  he left them in the images simply because he likes them.  He thinks of them as paintings within the paintings that are generated when the eye moves over the image, which I think is a very smart way to look at it. My favorite thing that he said, however, was something that I don't know that I would've given a second thought to, but Ashleigh had me write it down for her own memory and afterwards I found myself thinking about it:

"I thought about doing it, so I better not, not do it. So I did it."

I know I've heard a couple times this semester, "If you know what it's going to look like, why do you need to make it?" Sometimes you have to make something to get it out of your head because it plagues and haunts and pecks at you until you actually do it.  In some cases, you may think you know what it's going to look like, but it comes out completely different.  I think it is very important to get out any kind of idea that you have, especially if you have a gut feeling about it.

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Titles: 1) Heliopolis 2) Non-Slice 3) Yellow Ocean Lattice 4) V-Module 5) untitled yellow-black 6) upside down devil 7) the narrows
8) battery 9) enter the face 10) eight line way (pink) 11) Recursive Boustrophedonic Combs with Random Prong 12) Recursively Puckered Non-Slice