Biography

Raquel Vargas

Kelly and Davenport

WASH

26 February 2010

Sam Taylor-Wood

Sam Taylor-Wood was born in London, England on March, 4 1967. Taylor-Wood came from a separated family. Her mother and father divorced within her teenage years and she then moved in with her mother and step-father in Surrey. After their move inot Surrey, her mother left the family while Taylor-Wood was sixteen. Taylor-Wood had a hard time in school and it took her a long time to get into an art school. She graduated form Goldsmiths College in 1990 with a Fine Arts degree and is a member of the young British Artist group. Taylor-Wood married jay Jopling, her art dealer, in 1995. She had two daughters with him. After eleven years of marriage they split and Taylor-Wood is now engaged to actor, Aaron Johnson, and received their first child in January of 2010. In 1997, Taylor-Wood received the news that she had colon cancer. It was treated and then in 1999 she was diagnosed with breast cancer. This cancer was also successfully treated.

In 194, Taylor-Wood had her breakthrough with her short video, "Killing Time", where there are four people miming an opera score. After that her focus was on creating more multi-screen videos. In 1996, she came out with two short videos, "Travesty of a Mockery" and "Pent-Up". Taylor-Wood's work examines the split between being and appearance, often placing her human subjects - either singly or in groups - in situations where the live between interior and external sense of self is in conflict"(http://www.whitecube.com/artists/taylorwood/photographstwo). In some of her work, Taylor-Wood takes out some specific aspects to the piece. For example: in her 2006 film, "Prelude in Air", Tylor-Wood had a man playing a cello to a piece of music by Bach. One can hear the music but the cello has been erased from the picture. She does not just try this trick with her videos but also with her photography. In her series of self-portraits, "Self Portait Suspended I-VIII", one can see the artist hanging in air without any support. Taylor-Wood experiments with different things like weights and gravity, sounds, and growth and decay.

Taylor-Wood tries to share, through her pieces, society's social atmosphere and psychological senses. With some of her work, she thinks outside of the box and looks into sacred and profane. She connects religious imagery from the Renaissance era and Baroque's landscape paintings. Taylor-Wood also explores the ways of the human body. In her photography series, "Self Portrait Suspended" (2004), she "desplay[s] the vulnerability and fagility of the human body and self" (http://www.lacan.com/taylor.html).

A similar artist like Taylor-Wood is Juergen Teller. Teller crosses boundaries with fashion and photogrphy art. His style connects with Taylor-Wood; it is mostly dark and ambiguous. He likes to capture the imperfections of the human body. Taylor-Wood likes to capture the "vulnerability" of the human body. when one examines Teller's pieces, one might think that he is making an anti-fashion statement to the style of the eighties. With both Taylor-Wood and teller, these artists make whole new universes for the audience looking at their work. They hava a specific focus point that catches the audience's attention immediately.

Taylor-Wood's work caught my attention instantly. The artwork that I like the most is the portraits of the human bodies. Most of the pieces have the body in an awkward and interesting position. It makes me wonder why she put the body that way. Also those Taylor-Wood's pieces where she takes out an object also grabs my interest. It confuses me to why she took that part out and how she took it out in the end. Its also makes me think a lot harder to why she made certain changes to her pieces. Her work forms a lot of questions in my head. Her style is very dark and mysterious and it makes me look closer and longer at the pieces.

Work Cited:

"Sam Taylor-Wood -."Wikipedia, the free encyclopidia, Web, 26 Feb. 2010.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Taylor-Wood.

"Sam Taylor-Wood Biography and Artwork - MetroArtWork." MetroArtWork - MetroArtWork. Web, 26
Feb.2010. http://www.metroartwork.com/sam-taylorwood-bigoraphy-artworkm-192.html
sort=4a&page=1.

"Sam Taylor-Wood." White Cube. Web, 26 Feb. 2010.
http://www.whitecube.com/artists/taylorwood/photographstwo/.

Ukrainian Pavilian, Web, 26 Feb. 2010. http://ukrainianpavilion2007.org/en/artists/taylorwood.

Ukrainian Pavilion, Web, 26 Feb. 2010. ukrainianpavilion2007.org/en/artists/teller>.

"Sam Taylor-Wood." Splash28. Web, 26 Feb. 2010. http://www.lacan.com/taylor.html.

"Sam Taylor-Wood on artnet." Artnet - The Art World Online, Web, 26 Feb. 2010.
http://www.artnet.com/Artists/ArtistHomePage.aspx?artist_id=16443&page_tab=Artworks.

30 Pieces to Make You Question

With one quote and many different mark pieces, I found differnt spaces to put my quote. Here they are:

6 Quotes for the Top 6

Here are the Top 6 and their quotes that I thought went with them and why.

(From top to bottom)

1)"If Music be the food of love, play on." -William Shakespeare

I thought this quote is good for this painting because this is a music related painting toward my older brother and his love toward jazz music.

2)"I have flaws. And if you can't handle me at my worst, then you damn sure can't handle me at my best." -Marilyn Monroe

I picked this quote for this painting because the painting resmbles a beautiful woman with her hair in the wind and looking over her shoulder. It portrays my mom, she is a strong, beautiful, outgoing woman, and only a strong woman like my mom and Marilyn would say something like that.

3)"Imagination is more important than knowledge..." -Albert Einstein

I chose this quote for this painting because when I first started painting this piece I didn't think of a guitar, I was just doing a mark over and over, and then the music came to me and I took another look at the piece at a distance and it all then came to me. You don't have to see what I see, you are able to use your imagination to see what you see in this painting.

(From top to bottom)

1)" High school is like a spork: it's a crappy spoon and a crappy fork, so in the end it's just plain useless." -John Mayer

I chose this quote for this piece because I didn't know what I was doing and I didn't know where I was going to end up in the end and I felt the same way in high school.

2)"All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to purse them." -Walt Disney

I picked this quote for this piece because when I look at it, it looks like a 'dream' exploding, taking off, and coming true.

3)"I wish I knew how to quit you." -Jack Twist

I thought this quote is the only one that could go with this piece because I was writing the quote over and over agian on the paper.

Mark Evaluation

Here is the Evaluation I received:

'About 50% to 75% I am not sure, I was not fond of. Why? Because in some the marks were very similar, no variety at all mostly in the marks and I found them a bore to look at. As for some of them they formed pictures, I didn't like that either. But not all is doom an gloom for you. And some had some excellent pieces in there as well, some very beautiful I particularly like the tiny splats with lines, it's very different from all of your other pieces and I think it's the best.'

I found this critique very unhelpful, embarrasing, and hurtful. She didn't clearly state which were her top three so I tried my best to look for which she put aside for me. She also didn't state why she picked the top 3 she did. So here are the 3 I think she picked out.

These are my top three that I chose. Each one of these paintings were drawn for a family member.

I picked this one because while I was painting this one, we were listening to guitar music and I thought of my mom and Tito. They used to play guitar when I was younger. There were only supposed to be six lines but I accidentely made a seventh line so I call it "The Seventh String". I like it also because I didn't use the whole page like most of my other paitings, it's really clean and neat to me. It was fun to make, I'm pretty sure I used a straw to make this one.

I painted this one while listening to classical music I think. I was thinking about my mom at the time. She's a beautiful woman and I look up to her. So I made a a swoop mark over and over in the same spot and it reminded me of a woman with long hair looking over her shoulder. I haven't named it yet but this one is for my mom. I used my fingers to make this one.

This one is my number one favorite. We were listening to jazz music and the only person who got me hooked on jazz was my older brother. He is a genius at the alto sax, a complete god. I miss having him play for me. It is the same mark, in a backwards S motion. I was going for a saxaphone look for this picture. I used a sponge like thing to make the mark and it worked out nicely.

I Be Not Myself

For a week we have been working on storyboards for our "Not Myself" Videos. Here are mine.

A Full Post

For an hour we had to listen to a song for one hour again. So this time I listened to Lifehouse- "You and Me" And these are my paintings that I made within that hour.

For homework we had to choose from 12 choices: I chose to the one that said to fill up a page with one thought. My thought was: Love.

Quotes

Today in class, we had to find 10 quotes for 10 of our marks. Here are the two:

1) "We must become the change we want to see." - Mahatma Gandhi

2) "I wish I knew how to quit you." - Jack Twist

With these two quotes I picked out two of of my marks to go with them.