Drift Project

During my drift through downtown Reno on Wednesday October the 6^th, it became unavoidable for me to notice the massive, vacant casinos and buildings that seem to overwhelm certain parts of the area. Many of these buildings were once thriving but due to decline in business and other possible factors, they have become completely silent. One casino on the Virginia Street strip in particular has been vacant since 1997! There is a website you can visit, http://www.nevadamax.com/page4/tl1.html, which lists both the surviving and fallen casinos in the Reno area. All of these abandoned buildings made me think of Reno’s ‘Tent City’, located off of 4^th street that is occupied by numerous homeless people and exists in close proximity to the local homeless shelter. It is apparent that this ‘City” exists because there is not enough room in the shelter. This reminds me of an available building in San Francisco I saw on a visit there are few years ago. Someone had tagged in large letters on its front, “House the Homeless Here!”…

Treaty Signing at Medicine Creek

In the 1860’s, there was a peace treaty signing at Medicine Creek Lodge between the United States government and the Cheyenne, Arapahoe, Kiowa, and Comanche peoples. This scene was depicted by two artists. First was John Taylor, a journalist who was hired to portray the scene. Ten years later Howling Wolf, the son of the Cheyenne peoples Chief, depicted the scene while he was incarcerated.

Though each drawing is portraying the same event, they are remarkably different. John Taylor’s illustration is a true representation of the scene, while Howling Wolf’s image is more abstract. First the two artists used different mediums. Taylor’s image is black and white and done completely in pencil whereas Wolf’s illustration was done in pencil, crayon and ink making it colorful. Taylor’s image draws the viewer’s attention to the center of the drawing where the signing of the treaty is taking place. Wolf’s image has no central line to follow and instead of just showing the signing of the treaty, his image includes the river, tepees, and a horse. Wolf’s image also contains numerous women, where Taylors does not depict one woman. Lastly, the most noticeable difference is in the way the Native American’s are portrayed within the two drawings. In Taylor’s image, the Native Americans are almost identical looking, and somewhat shadowed out, where each is represented individually in Wolf’s creation by way of different decoration and dress.

Ethnocentricity is outlined in each of these drawings. it is evident through his drawing that Taylor did not see the Native Americans as individuals, even though he was representing members that came from four different tribes, they each looked the same. Another conclusion that can be drawn from the juxtaposition of the two works is the role of women to each culture. There are numerous women represented in Wolf’s image, which leads us to believe that women were a central part of his culture, so much so that women make up the majority of the Native Americans included in his drawing. The absence of women altogether in Taylor’s image, confirms the role of women in America in the 1800’s society as just that, having no role.

Each drawing is interesting to me and I like them equally. Though they are supposed to represent an identical moment in time it is fascinating to see the differences between the drawings as perceived by each culture.
John Taylor http://www4.uwm.edu/letsci/mls/syllabi/702/702-1b.cfm
Howling Wolf http://www4.uwm.edu/letsci/mls/syllabi/702/702-1c.cfm

http://www.rwc.uc.edu/artcomm/web/w2005_2006/maria_Goldsworthy/works.html

Andy Goldsworthy is a British artist who works exclusively with nature. Each of his unique works is created entirely out of natural material like rocks, leaves, ice, snow etc. He uses video and photographs to share his creations because they are made in nature, with natural materials and will disintegrate with time. Goldsworthy’s personal feelings relating to his works are “the impermanent and changeable lines are a metaphor for human life, both the paths of our personal lives and the time line of human history.”

Obamicon

Chester Arnold Exhibit, Nevada Museum of Art 9/9/10

Upon entering the exhibit “On Earth as it is In Heaven”, I was overwhelmed with beautiful paintings littered with tires, papers, clothing, and scenes depicting strip mines and exhausted landscapes with nothing left but tree stumps. These works by Chester Arnold though beautiful, send a clear message of the overproduction, disuse, waste and greed we face today as a society.

The painting that stood out to me the most was titled “Entropic Landscape”. This work displayed a massive valley of black car tires with smoke stacks billowing in the background and a small pool of discolored water between. This painting is a scary reference to the overproduction and waste happening in the automobile industry. I think that Chester Arnolds point with this piece was to put out the idea that if we keep mass producing and wasting at this rate, there is potential for this eerie scene to become a reality, valleys of tires and filthy polluted water. Quoted from a description of another of Arnolds works, “there is only so much the earth can withstand”.

Chester Arnold was born in Germany and later came to the United States, he know resides in Sonoma, California and continues to produce his amazing artworks.