LESLIE BAUM
OCTOBER 16, 2014
I recently heard a woman named Leslie Baum speak about her artwork on October 16, 2014. She started with a poem that her friend and fellow artist had written especially for her. She gives credit of her love of art to her parents, who took her to many museums and exposed her to art as a young child. She incorporates the themes of impulse to discover and share thoughts and ideas with others who share the same interests, and she believes that making paintings equals discovery of new things and ideas. She is very big into expression and personal interpretation. Baum loves making connections with others and helping them discover their own personal artwork series. Her memories find places in her artwork and help make connections between herself and her work. Baum started out painting landscapes, then went back to the basics of color blocks, and considers herself an observational painter. She did a big water paintings subject, where she painted watercolor and made the edges very straight and created a new window motif, that was another big theme of hers. Her newest artwork series consists of her taking pieces of famous artists work, like Matisse, and taking literal pieces of them and putting them in her own work, but abstracting them to create a new image all together. She is an original woman with a lot of new takes on old work.
ALISON CROCETTA
NOVEMBER 6, 2014
I heard a speech by Allison Crocetta on November 6, 2014 where she talked about her recent artwork. She began straight away with many images from her childhood and what fueled her inspiration. Her artwork series, as she describes, is and exercise in freedom. She works with many different materials, including people, bodies, video, and songs. She mainly works in performance art. She sings songs in some of her performance art to enhance the presentation. She loves working with words in art, and combining the architectural and fashion world into one. She uses simple materials and she thinks soundtracks to show are very important. She loves to collaborate with others to create more dynamic shows and compositions. She creates videos and soundtracks for her work.
JON YAMASHIRO
NOVEMBER 20, 2014
Jon Yamashiro recently spoke at Miami University about his photography and his experiences throughout life and his time at Miami University. Jon is a Hawaiian and Japanese man who grew up in Hawaii. He moved to Indiana with his family after he received his BFA and MFA. Then he started teaching photography at Miami University in 1993. He took ceramics in high school, but he would always be taking photos, and one day he realized that ceramics was not the thing for him, so he focused more on photographs. He studied the nude model in college, and experimented with different types of people, body shapes, and subject matter. He always used the same type of lens and exposure for his photographs. He focused more on light, frame, structure, and lines and how it affects the pictures he takes. He is interested in the history of things and what happens to things after they die. He collected dead objects, like geckos and lizards from his Grandmother's yard and used them in his photo shoots. One of his favorite shots, A Monster In The Bush, was a real eye opener for him. It made him realize that having a simple object can change the meaning of it when it's in certain ways. The intentions transcend the meaning of what it is. He goes on imagination journeys and uses antiques. Overall, he is a man with a lot of inspiration, and creative ideas.