art diva studios visuals and verbiage by Rachelle Díaz
critique
Defining Space, Defining Experience
Lately I’ve been re-thinking my theory that décor/design “art” should not be called art, and that real, proper art is something alchemic. After going to the Denver Art Museum last week (a proper art museum) the shift in perception has been further solidified. The definition of art as visual concept rather than decorative power structure [...]
Transformation: More Than Meets The Eye*
Painting is better the more it’s like sculpture; sculpture is worse the more it’s like painting. A painting can be: A. A picture that references something, an object or event B. The materials, paint, canvas, paper, wood, etc., self-referencing C. A new, self-sufficient object, without reference to the material or thing it portrays, an ecosystem. [...]
Pop Up Spaces Downtown Scavenger Hunt Exhibit
At last, we got the space we wanted to display participants’ creative responses to the prompts on the Downtown Tucson Scavenger Hunt back in March. The resulting photos, drawings and writings will be displayed in old window display boxes on the side of the former McLellan’s department store, a beacon of classic downtown shopping for [...]
Artiquette
Well, my prediction about the Tucson city budget meeting earlier this week was fulfilled: the impending fallout is now a bitter controversy. As Tu Scene is not a place for critique (yet), I shall blow hot pixels here, opinionated Art Diva that I am. Who knew everyone and their dog who opposed the hotel and [...]
Post and Re-post
An extremely bastardized title of The Atlantic‘s* “Post and Riposte” section. Oh, well. I’m re-posting this from Tu Scene to here because I feel it’s more in the art-writing vein, which I have guiltily neglected for the past couple of months. (Don’t worry CAG, I didn’t forget about you either, the title was just too [...]
Velvet Rebellion
Prologue 1. Sametová Revoluce. The Velvet Revolution (Czech: sametová revoluce) (November 16- December 29, 1989) refers to a non-violent revolution in Czechoslovakia that saw the overthrow of the Communist government. On November 17, 1989, riot police suppressed a peaceful student demonstration in Prague. That event sparked a series of popular demonstrations from November 19 to [...]
Testing the waters
The First Friday event went OK for me. I put out a sheet-covered easel with a couple of my paintings, set out my $1 postcards and created an interactive environment where I’d draw people’s characteratures. No, not the kind with the big heads, but more illustrative and funky style (especially the work of Dennis Eriksson [...]
Vogueing Out
A couple of things caught my eye as I cracked open the March 2008 issue of VOGUE yesterday. 1) Is high fashion trying to angle itself with high art? Art has been what I would call “street hip” for a couple of years now, but for me, the deer heads, power lines and raindrops are [...]
Sweet vs Shameful: Art Logos
The Diva’s kickin’ it old school, going back to my pithy early days of blogging focused on graphic design critique. Women & Their Work I heard about an opening at Women & Their Work tonight and went to their website for more information. The show, featuring terrifying yet cute fabric sculptures by Katy Heinlein, looked [...]
Corporate Art takes on a new form
I packed in with scores of my closest fellow hipster doofi at the opening of the Scion Installation 4: It’s A Beautiful World at Gallery Lombardi on Saturday. The whole event rubbed me horribly wrong (not the gallery’s fault). 1. Why have an opening in an 18′ x 30′ gallery where hundreds of people are [...]
Boo! Zeitgeist
For the last few years, the trendy image in illustration, home décor, fashion and, eventually, art has been Nature: birds, trees, deer heads, bears. Or perhaps it started the other way around – the design trend of nature has influenced art. Howe’er it was, while this theme of nature has been recycled around the Austin [...]
Beauty vs Decoration
Revisiting the bird silhouette that was a major element in my 2004 paintings has made me realize how much my experiences over the past 3-4 years have changed my approach to making art. When I first started using the bird silhouette, it was basically a copy of some hipster pop art I saw on Gallery [...]
The Greater Good and the Lesser Evil
The more art web- and paper-based publications I read, the less I want to read. Such a polarized landscape. The dumbing-down, super-mass audience camp has been reporting on the same type of subjects over and over for years. Then there are the upper-crust writers that because they self-publish their own blog or magazine feel entitled [...]
The Gender of Grassroots
When you look at a cross-section of the grassroots, contemporary visual arts upstarts in Austin, most were founded by men, or a majority of men form the entities running these spaces (Okay Mountain, ArtPalace, Mass Gallery, Bolm Studios, Fresh Up Club, to name a few). In this brief and underdeveloped analysis, I am not including [...]
Things to Come: Country Escape vs Urban Immersion
Perhaps in 10 years or less, the artists loci featured in the Texas Biennial will not be the megapolisesesses of Dalls/Houston/San Antonio/Austin, but rather will sound like a litany of nowheres in the show catalog: Quanah, Palacios, Wied, Electric City, Mount Enterprise, Hico, Uvalde, Valentine… Artists will go on an exodus into the countryside for [...]
Things to Come: Realism
This piece is first in a series of opinionated forecasts about art, culture, fashion and business called Things to Come. Look for these posts in the oracles category, but don’t look for definitive answers. There is too much history to absorb. We only receive vague transmissions of our own culture, like watching a snowy TV [...]
Throwing Bones
In a city that prides itself on being a supportive place where creative people can do their thang, the cost of living here is slowly killing that climate. Despite what citizens with Keep Austin Weird and No War in Iraq bumper stickers neatly emblazoned on the back of their SUVs/VWs/recumbent bikes seem to take for [...]
Veni, Vidi, Artsy, Fartsy: Continued
A year later, I have mixed feelings about the changes I’ve seen in this part of the city over a short amount of time. First, my rent has doubled. I’m now living in a new-construction townhouse 1/2 mile away from my former digs on Poquito—yes, it’s one of those hideous mini-McMansions. It’s not without some [...]
Veni, Vidi, Artsy, Fartsy: Part 1
Following is a rough essay I started writing for Cantanker magazine a few months ago, but I wasn’t satisfied with the way it was going. While I feel I can express myself well with the written word at rare moments, most of the time I get pen-tied, too many things spewing forth at once. My [...]
Makeup Ads Need an Extreme Makeover
Every once in a while, when in an escapist mood, I throw a Cosmo or Glamour in my cart at the grocery store. I also admit to having an annual subscription to Vogue; I believe it’s healthy to have a dose of unattainable otherness in one’s life. As a friend of mine once remarked, “Dreaming [...]
Snacks for Thought
It’s been my thought for a long time that processed foods should return to their packaging of yesteryear.Not only are foods either flavor-blasted or xtreme, so are the designs. I can hear a marketing developer command their designer, “Make it jump off the shelf!” without realizing their product looks as flavor-blasted and xtreme as the [...]
A Little Art With Your Music?
Saturday night, I went to Ghostland Observatory’s CD realease party for their new album Delete.Delete.I.Eat.Meat. At the door, I received a free copy of the CD inserted in a silk-screened paperboard folder with a vellum insert. Number 57 out of an edition of 200. Perhaps gig posters may be on their way out of the [...]
The topic that just won’t die
A old but good review covering the emergence of gig posters. Bookmark on Delicious Recommend on Facebook Share via MySpace Share with Stumblers Tumblr it Tweet about it Subscribe to the comments on this post Tell a friend Print for later
The Sibling Rivalry Between Visual Art and Illustration
There are good and bad aspects to everything. The truth is somewhere in between. Sweet: Illustration featured in Print’s 2004 Regional Design Annual While I often check out the websites of firms and designers I’ve heard about, Print’s Regional Design Annual is one of my main sources for inspiration when I’m in a slump. As [...]