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women

women, paintings
Kaja
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This portrait of a friend is done on a decoupaged piece of wood I found at a thrift store.

2004

Acrylic on found art, 5″ x 7″

$40
women, paintings, life
Lost in thought
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Depression, or, Why Do Hot Dog Buns Come In Packages of 8 But Hot Dog Buns Come In Packages of 10? A friend suggested the second title. It’s such a serious subject, so it’s nice to have a funny twist. Plus, I’m a huge Animaniacs fan!

2004

Acryilc on peg board, 24″ x 36″

Collection of Joel Sweeney
women, observations
Where my ladeez at?
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So I’m organizing a multi-media art show at Pump Project Art Complex that incorporates collaborative painting, film/video installations and live music. One of the coolest parts of curating is connecting with and really being impressed by other artists. It’s by far the best way to get to know the processes, techniques, and individuals out there in the local art scene. But the issue I’m running into is the lack of Austin-based female artists to join in the show. My current roster is, well, a sausage-fest. Perhaps I’m just not looking in the right places for hip, emerging women video artists, painters & musicians? C’mon, I know y’all are out there!
women, advertising, style, critique
Makeup Ads Need an Extreme Makeover
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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 is free.”

When reading a women’s magazine, you know what to expect: pandering articles regarding beauty, clothes, shoes, sex, relationships, health, and occasionally, social issues. Articles saying you don’t have to look like a model or celebrity to be happy with yourself, then ads telling you the exact opposite.

Worst and least creative of all are the numerous ads for makeup. Usually taking up an entire spread, many brands with more than one placement, they simultaneously blare and recede. Except for slight differences, most incorporate the same design elements:

1. A really, really big face, usually a celebrity or well-known model (link to death of the supermodel)

2. Large logo

3. Lots of subheads and small type for the product description

4. Busy backgrounds, usually a city, interior, or brightly colored backdrop

5. A seasonal make-up “theme” associated with a mini-line of products

The experience of viewing several of these in a magazine is not unlike passing billboards on the highway. Normally you don’t pay attention to them unless the advertising company is promoting the billboard’s own vacancy with an elegant little tagline like, “Does advertising work? It just did!” A billboard is even more noticeable when it’s completely empty, alone and decrepit on the frontage road. But this is not meant to be a rumination on the stark beauty of postmodern wasteland.

Or is it? By using conventional type, images and layout, the cosmetics industry shows it’s out of touch with its consumer base, especially with the younger audiences that read women’s magazines. These brands are based in the old paradigm that believes women need makeup because we need a mask to hide feelings of anger, depression and inadequacy from ourselves and those we have relationships with, just as we have been expected to for centuries.

Over the past 10 or 15 years, the everyday use of makeup for many women has shifted from an absolute necessity to an amusement. It’s like playing in our mother’s valuable, obligatory makeup when we were little girls. (Which is why I was punished when I played with makeup! In those days, my mom seemed to think it was a life-or-death situation if she wasn’t wearing lipstick. She has since relinquished much of her attachment to makeup.) The color products featured in seasonal campaigns somewhat reflect this change, but again, the conservative graphic design betrays the aim of playfulness. The increase of light-wearing, long-wearing, oil-free, moisturizing, anti-aging, etc. products in the market like base and powder has is not so much about putting on a mask of flawlessness regardless of what irritation it causes, than it is about feeling comfortable in your own skin.

Putting your best, healthiest face forward means you should be confident in projecting your own personal style, especially since there’s a variety of choices available. And big brands also seem to be unaware of the variety of faces out there too. Cover Girl probably considered it highly progressive to use Queen Latifah as a salesmodel. Beyoncé Knowles’ contract with L’Oreal states that she cannot change anything about her appearance without their explicit permission. Estée Lauder was applauded like Bill Clinton at an NAACP meeting upon signing Ethiopian model Liya Kebede as its first model of color last year (and it must be noted that even Kebede’s facial structure fits the mold of Carolyn Murphy’s frigid perfection, unlike the unique radiance of Alek Wek, an African model who has dominated the runways for at least the past 5 years). By continuing to push the big mask-like, usually white faces (link to cover girl image on my website), big brands risk losing connection with a diverse audience. Especially marginalized women that precisely need the confidence of feeling comfortable in their own skin.

The best way to address these issues requires a drastic change in branding. This breakthrough was half-accomplished in the early 1990’s by the tremendously successful Urban Decay in its name alone. Through an ultrahip, quasi-degenerate rock star mystique, Urban Decay propagated unheard-of color products like blue nail polish and shimmering green lipstick. All this was done with hardly any advertising, except the buzz generated by beauty editors giving props to it in their sections. By the late 90’s, all the big companies had followed suit and were offering their own glittery goop, and today, nearly 15 years later, even Tinkerbell has given up her wand to all things bright and sparkly in the tween market. Shouldn’t the success of a highly original cosmetics brand be further emulated not just through product lines, but through advertising design as well?

Clinique’s print ads from the mid to late 1990’s were also a wonderful study in simplicity, almost approached as a design school problem. The only features were a photo of the package with a swipe or dusting of the product around it on a white background, establishing a “clinical,” healthy brand. In more recent ads, however, Clinique’s photographers seem to think the minimalist approach is on its way out, lacking in pizzazz. A few elements of former atypical elegance remain, but now the makeup is haphazardly spilled all the whitespace. It’s not even a well-thought-out mess (there is such a thing).

The Pink-a-pades ads from the 1960’s would be a great model to follow. Not only were they promoting that essential mod cosmetic, frosty pink-white lipstick, the design itself is truly a sign of the times, inspired by the psychadelic graphic art movement to create a very hip, appealing ad. By relying more on illustration, good copywriting and better type choices, designers for the cosmetics industry would have greater freedom to navigate with the trends of today’s youth. The emphasis would not be on a flawless white face, but on how the consumer uses the product to create their own style. Drawing on inspiration from the trendier venues of graphic art, a total re-thinking of makeup ads would add individuality and diversity not only the company brands, but to the concept of beauty in general.

This industry does not just need an update; it needs a huge reality check. Not a-slenderizing-new-haircut-and-vertical-stripes makeover, or a nip-here-tuck-there but a hit-the-gym-and-throw-away-everything-you-own transformation.
women, life, observations
Drawn to Art
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The artist belongs to his work, not the work to the artist.
- Novalis

If you’re going to be an artist, be prepared to be slightly unhappy for the rest of your life.
- Something I read or heard recently

My favorite thing is to go where I’ve never been.
- Diane Arbus

I watched the movie Girl, Interrupted yesterday. The story follows a depressed but aspiring young writer through her life in a mental institution. I haven’t read the book, but its themes about upper middle-class women, art and mental health reminded me of some of my writing I’d discovered the day before. It was a months-old response to an article my boyfriend was writing about Revelations, the powerful Diane Arbus retrospective we’d seen in Houston. In the exhibition’s design, Arbus’ journal notes fused poignantly with her photography, revealing a woman on an endless mission to find herself in other people. As a middle-class, white female who has been drawing since I could grip a crayon, I can relate to both the protagonist in Girl, Interrupted and Arbus in their struggles to breathe meaning into their work and life.

*

Jul-21-2004

I understand where Arbus is coming from, with her suicide and her choice for not getting treated for her depression. If you remember what she wrote about her childhood, she said she felt cheated out of life. She was comfortable, never wanted for anything, had a stable family, and what a stark contrast it seemed like from everyone else’s life, especially during the Great Depression. When your growing up does not have much hardship, and if you are a very self-aware and observant person, you feel like you haven’t really lived. You feel like you have to have some conflict to be creative, to really suffer along with everyone else. I think this is why Arbus was drawn to art, and drawn to her subjects. This talk about suffering for one’s art is true. When you feel called to be an artist, you feel like suffering is necessary for the success of what you do, to legitimize it for yourself. I’m saying an artist, if they have not really experienced any difficult conditions that were out of their control, can’t help but feel a little jealous of people who have undergone some real suffering, as children or as adults. Those are the people that have a right to art; it’s not a privilege. Maybe it’s not jealousy most of the time, but definitely an extreme fascination, an obsession to observe. She had been empathizing with the people in her photographs for decades. Through her mental anguish over the years and eventual suicide, she hoped to join their “aristocracy” and perhaps legitimize her work to herself. It doesn’t matter how enthusiastic other people are over what you produce, all that ultimately counts is your own opinion.

I empathize with her choices because I feel the same way a lot of time. I had a pretty easy childhood: intact happy family, good student, went to good schools, enough money for a nice place to live, most of the time. I really didn’t worry about anything, but I always wanted to be different, to make things hard. When I was 9, I remember that I really wanted to wear glasses, but I had perfect vision. So I pretended to not to see very well for a few days and my mom took me to the eye doctor, even though she knew I was lying. Of course, I did not need them. A lot of external things have changed me, but they didn’t have to. I let them, and did nothing about it, because as my mind has really grown up over the last few years, I can see how much art is about hardship and suffering. Practically any story is: exposition, climax, anticlimax. That’s why I don’t write stories; I don’t have anything from experience I can write about.

Someone like you, on the other hand (and I’m only using you as an example), you have an indisputable right to create art, to write, because from what I can surmise, your childhood was not very easy. Changing schools every 2 months, moving around, living wherever you could, working hard, learning English, having a large, crazy family, being cocoa in a vanilla land. There’s thousands of stories right there. You have a right to tell them and be heard.

Arbus is saying that freaks are beyond even that.

But this is why art is a calling. To use a cliché: you don’t choose it, it chooses you. First you have to decide whether or not to answer the call. Then, it’s how you deal with the calling that’s important, and that is where your choice comes in. Arbus dealt with it in her own way, and I can understand why she did it. She wrote that she felt stymied in her last few years. What am I going to do next? she wondered. How can I move to the next thing? What will it be? Perhaps this is why the deformed mentally retarded patients were her last project. They were the final aristocracy because unlike circus freaks, they were totally shut out from society. I think for an artist to commit suicide, the scariest thing would not be dying, but to end your creative process. You would really have to feel stuck, maybe more than a normal non-artist depressed person, in order to go through with it. I’m not saying her choice was right either, but from her standpoint, I can see how she might’ve felt it was necessary.