101th Post!

Hello everyone,

This is my 101th post! I started this blog as a part of my NYC residency at the Elizabeth's Foundations for the Arts that SCAD supported. That was about one and half years ago, doing small entires about my experiences in New York, then to my thesis, solo show at Get This! Gallery... and many other happenings.

This past year, my blog had over 3000 pageviews and this past month October had 1223 page views! That's historical in my life, guys!

Thank you so much, readers, for keeping up with my posts. They are not the most eloquent entries, but I have been incredibly encouraged by some of your responses about the blog. My friends told me they enjoy meeting other artists through my blog and learning more about artists and art making. Also it was awesome to have Creative Loafing and BURNAWAY refer my blog! I want to continue to update you on my artistic journey without making it complicated, and hopefully to refine my voice as a blogger.
I now have opened the comments section, so that I can receive more feedbacks and develop more dialogues. So please feel free to leave your comments and let me know if you would like to see more of something... like art happenings in Atlanta, stories about my art friends, more interviews...?!




The Persistance of Memory, Salvador Dali


Well, I just heard from NPR this morning that Dali's melting clock painting "The Persistance of Memory" just joined the High's current Dali exhibition “Salvador Dalí: The Late Work.” If you ever took art classes in middle or high school, you would have come acrossed this painting at some point. Everyone, go and see this show. I believe more Atlantans participate and show how enthusastic we are about the arts, the city will recognize and invest more in the arts, bringing more exciting art and cultural happenings in the city. And it's a wonderful show.

Ronald Feldman

Also for people in the Atlanta community, join New York based gallery owner, Ronald Feldman and Stuart Horodner, Artistic Director for the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center as they discuss the state of today's contemporary art market. Ronald Feldman is a legendary art dealer who introduced Joseph Beuy's work in the States and was able to make unsalable art marketable. Well, that's something I (Gyun Hur's installations are not marketable, eh hem. -_+;; ) should be going to - it depends on my installation progress today, but if you are free, Go!

Ronald Feldman: On Dealing
Hill Auditorium at High Museum of Art  at 7 pm.
Admission is FREE.


Ok, thanks everyone again for reading! Tonight, I'll post my Installation day 3 photos.



xoxo,
Gyun

Parenting

What do I know about parenting? Basically nothing... I am just a young single woman artist. Yet it has been interesting for me to observe different parenting styles with my tutoring students.

Today, I had a tutoring session with this one girl. We have been working on this piece for the Reflections competition. Do you remember when you were in school, doing Reflections competition? I did it for a few years in middle school and high school. Anyways, we were working really hard on it and the student felt quite accomplished by this particular piece. She just started learning how to use a brush as well, so we were touching up the painting... then her mother got the brush and started to paint, correcting all the smudges and imperfections.

I was so shocked at the moment! It clashed with my ideology... you don't just 'fix' a child's drawing for the sake of getting a great result and a nice pretty picture. I can understand the mother's ambition of making the piece clean and nice for the competition, but it took a lot of energy for me to let go of that moment.

Don't get me wrong. Everyone has a different parenting style, and I am not the one to judge. Some mothers sit with me and children and they 'actively' participate in lessons, correcting kids how to use a crayon and how to color. Yet... when you do not allow a space for a child to explore, fail, and achieve out of their minds and creativity, a child will eventually produce a mirror of a parent's expectations.

After the lesson, the mother packed me a nice hot sandwich and a drink for dinner. She had a kind of warmth of my own mother. With confused emotions, I drove home thinking about what just happened.

 . . .


Later this evening, I went to Michael's in Johns Creek (one of affluent suburbs in Metro-Atlanta) to submit the child's drawing to be matted. There, I saw a couple spending a very long time choosing a right matting color for their children's school photos. The mother especially had a serious look... every tint of color mattered and even the width of mat was going to be an important decision.

There as I was waiting, I thought about aesthetic decisions we all make every day outside of art context.

Last night at Atlanta Contemporary Center of Art, Nato Thompson (Chief Curator at Creative Time) talked about interesting issues of public art and its audience. He said artists are not the only cultural producers anymore... people are going crazy with phones and social media to document happenings - real happenings. Artist should perhaps acknowledge 'the current condition of cultural and city landscape' and catch poignant and genuine moments of lives that matter to people.

I witnessed a very important aesthetic decision making taking place at Miachel's. Even though I could not help to be skeptical about their aesthetic preferences, in their own terms, they were genuinely caring about their standing as parents and - perhaps artists.

I took a snapshot of this couple, trying to pick out the best matting colors for their children's school photos.

Family Paintings at Michael's

Work of art at $79.99

According to Michael's, Christmas is coming real soon!