Print Festival Report Critique

Critique of my report,

 by my Print Making class professor Aragon

Great description of the pieces; your narrative of the essay has a natural flow but there are times when it felt a bit dry. Mainly because there were some sentences that need to be connected rather that have them on their own. When you create short sentences you define a style that mimics a more factual element of the piece; in your case, while you are using facts, I think it would’ve helped the tone of voice of the paper to be less formal so that the reader can “immerse” into the description of the events or the artworks. It seems to me you really enjoyed the Print Fair and had quite the time discovering new artists and their work. I hope this has translated into your own ideas for future pieces and makes you push yourself into creating more complicated imagery.

Keep up the good work

Met Art Museum Report

Met Art Museum Report

November 20, 2016

Rewritten December 2, 2016

These are Claude Monet’s pieces, Four Trees and Manneporte (Etretat). The Manneport surprises me because there are a lot more details than you expect from the father of Impressionism. Still, there’s a lot of shadow and motion, from the curve of the rock and the movement of the water, which you expect from Impressionism. It had a lot more detail than the Four Trees. Manneport has a lot of feeling, such as my Mask piece. My Mask piece gives you a feeling of horror. Manneport gives you a feeling of loneliness, like a leaving. I liked the fact thatthe inside of the arch in Manneport was very bright on the yellow/orange side, which contrasted with the dark blue water and light blue sky. Four Trees has very little contrast. Just a bit of yellow sky. There was also a lot of hard edges in the arch, unlike Four Trees, which has very few hard edges. It helped Manneport in that it was very close, allowing for a lot of the detail that made it so good. Four Trees is more distant and has less detail and, being an Impressionist piece, suggests a lot, like my Doll House.

I also saw Vincent Van Gogh’s Wheat Field With Cypresses. I was impressed with the way he used color, mostly blue skies and very green plants, contrasted with the very yellow wheat field. His contrasts and composition were effective like Manneport, though it was much more distant, like Four Trees.  He used a lot of bright color, the way I did with my Fruit On The Table piece, but he was a lot more organized with his complimentary colors and composition. Van Gogh's yellow in Wheat Field contrasted the blue and the green the way the yellow/orange contrasted against the blue in Manneport. Even the blue and green were interesting in the way they were separated, though they're not contrasting colors, they were contrasted in their shape. the green plants have a lot of short lines, while the sky has a lot of broad, blue space. Another point of contrast in Wheat Fields is that it is mostly vertical, except for the tree on the right going upward, not centered, giving us a surprise. Four Trees has four, evenly space trees that don't contrast with the rest of the picture.

Finally, there was Siesta, by Paul Gauguin. Frankly, I wasn’t impressed. It was a very peaceful piece, no where near as erotic as we’ve come to expect from him. I saw little else that impressed me. There was bright and dark colors in some of the shirts, which contrasted with the green glass, but it wasn't as impressive as Monet's and Van Gogh's color, contrast and composition. No really hard or soft edges. No emphasis on any space. It's just a painting of a family photo.

Print Festival Report

Print Festival Report
by David Rubin

Today I went to see Print Festival, at the International Print Center, at 524 W 26 St, Manhattan. It was an exhibit of print art by students.
There was so many good-looking prints, I didn’t know where to look first. I was also surprised at how simple some of the work was. Some of it was as simple as making a print of pressed dandelions and it looked great.
My favorite artist is Lizzy Itzkowitz, a cartoon art student at the School of Visual Arts. She’s been working at it for seven years, studying the Adobe Creative Suite. She’s worked on a variety of media, including gouache, acrylic, paper collage and digital. She does a lot of print pictures, as well as cartoon booklets. You can see her work at https://www.behance.net/lizzyitz
She screen printed a lot of designs and I love all the color, especially the cat. The

cat has three colors, neon pink, neon yellow and neon blue. All those blotches of neon curvy color make it seem quite happy, especially the large orange on yellow on his belly, which strikes me as much of a greeting as the raised left arm.
She also screen printed Cactus Terrarium, 11"X17", neon pink, neon yellow, neon blue and navy blue, and Coral Reef, same size and colors, done on a transparency, below. Like the cat, they are both beautiful because of all the bright, neon colors.
I like the looks of Coral Reef. There seems to be a lot of movement in that sky blue background.
As for Cactus Terrarium, as good as it looks, it looks out place without any background. I’d have printed  it as being on a table, or something. It is on a transparency. Perhaps the background is whatever she puts it on. If it were me, I’d have painted a table and put the transparency on it, a multimedia.
Another piece I liked, to the right, is Monday’s 2016, by Kathleen Johnson. It’s a 28" X 29" woodcut. Clearly this belongs on the cover of Fantasy & Science Fiction magazine. It’s nothing but black lines on a white sheet. Allthose lines give it a lot of horrific detail, especially the thin lines on his face and nose. All that horror is emphasized by the thin black rays around it.