Materializing New Space

I really really liked the fact that we had the opportunity to listen to Kelly Urquhart and Jaime Kennedy tell us about their artwork before we got to see the exhibit. It was very interesting and really surprising hearing what their artwork is trying to convey, because it was different from how I viewed it. But that's probably how it always is.

I felt like the relationship between the birds with wing suits and those without was almost like a dictatorship, and kind of scary. But at the same time it was really whimsical, the way they combined real life photographs with drawings and digital manipulation. It's like a fairy tale, with a dark ending. My favorite pieces were the different versions of nests. It kind of opens your eyes to animal intelligence because those nests weren't very far off from what birds could/ and have really made from found materials. The instruction sheets with drawings of birds were, in my eyes, the most depressing of the pieces. I just felt a sort of hopelessness. Almost like the birds were being forced into these suits.

Kelly and Jaime said they approached their art as a way to answer or ask questions they have about the world, but my interpretation was that of an advanced and more aware animal race. And how they solve problems within their ecosystem/environment. But I could also see it as humans making these suits and forcing birds to wear them in order to basically become bird slaves to the humans. Obviously both of those theories are different than the artists' intentions but I think that was the best part of the lecture, was seeing how differently people think and what inspires them to create beautiful artwork.