While I was at Argo Tea near Baruch today, I saw this photo and it really stood out to me. I was surprised a painting was at a place where tea is being sold. I wonder how that happened. This painting is priced at $250. So I’m assuming the artist is just beginning to go into this business. I wonder why the artist chose a place like Argo Tea to sell her work. I really was attracted to this painting because of the colors and the speakers. I really enjoy music so I saw this as how the speakers are playing all sorts of different musics which is expressed through the different colors. It shows how creative the music can be it’s interpreted differently from people. I like how the speakers have a neutral color. It shows that they’re the basic to letting music be heard. The neutral colors around the colorful colors ironically helps the speakers stand out in the painting. It shows the positiveness music can do. Just looking at this painting makes me feel happy and want to listen to my music.

Did any of you see this painting too? Or seen a painting in a place you never imagined like I did?

In the beginning, I was anxious and excited to see the his paintings since religion influenced Zhang Huan and I am Buddhist as well. However, my feelings were actually opposite of how I thought I would feel. I thought it was going to be about peace, but it’s totally the opposite! First of all, the paintings I saw were definitely NOT “Poppy Fields.” They do have that concept but it’s not as beautiful as it seems. Instead of poppies, there are heads in the paintings, specifically skulls. When I saw it from a far, I thought they were heads of dragons for because I thought of the Chinese background and the love for dragons. The eyes did freak me out a lot. I thought the colors were pretty, in the beginning. However, as I got closer to the painting, it shocked me and I felt really uncomfortable. It made me dizzy and scared by the weird eyes, colors, and the popped up paintings of some of the heads and colors.

I was so shocked to know it was about hallucination and used real incense ash in his paintings. The colors, repetition of the skull, the 3-D pop ups gave the negative feelings. I wonder what inspired him to create this painting. Why hallucination out of all the topics in the world. I wonder if he secretly did drugs or had an experience with hallucination, which was why he created this painting. I do agree with him that it does lead to death and the painting sends the strong message. I wonder why he made so many “Poppy Fields” paintings but with different colors.

How did you guys feel about the painting? Did you feel disturbed as I was when you saw the painting or was it just me? More importantly, do you like the painting?

“Delusions” at the Rox Gallery was definitely a different experience from the other exhibitions we went to. However, I really liked this gallery because all of the pieces together were different from what we normally saw. In fact, this gallery featured pop art and surrealism, two types of art that, together, are pretty amazing. However, the one piece of art, or rather four pieces, that interested me were located downstairs. You all probably saw the pictures of the leaves downstairs. For some reason, I was just engrossed in those images. At first, I thought, “These are photos of the same leaf, only with different colors. What is so great about it?” But then, it hit me that these photos were not the same leaves in different colors. No, in fact, these photos were showing the stages of the leaves. First a leaf in spring is a bright green. Then as summer ends and autumn comes around, the leaf turns red, orange, and eventually the leaves become multicolored. Eventually the leaves start falling from trees and the trees become bare, with no leaves. This leads to the last picture, the picture of the black leaf. When the leaf hits the floor, it degrades and loses its color. The cycle then repeats again when the weather changes from winter to spring. These photos caught my eye because it reminded me of the circle of life. A leaf is “born” in spring and has a green color; it “grows up” during autumn and becomes multicolored. The leaf goes through a lot of color changes. Finally it withers and “dies” in winter. Something as simple as leaves can be used to show how despite everything coming to an end, there are also new beginnings. Besides, since we are in the season of autumn (though it does not feel like autumn haha), we should appreciate all autumn has to offer, which includes nature and the different colors of the leaves because in about a couple of months, they will all be gone.

We passed this building a couple of times on our way to the park on our trips, and it made curious. What was this big elaborate building? Thanks to Google maps and Wikipedia, I found out that its the NY Appellate building. It was built in 1899, and is a New York landmark. It has a few statues on the building representing justice, wisdom, and strength. I think its a beautiful building, but its also cool becuase its a remionder of what you can find if you just look around (and don’t get distracted by the big Credit Suisse building). photo from manhattansideways.com

When Professor Eversley first mentioned about the multimedia project, this video came to my mind. This video combines a few different works of art: spoken word poetry, music (more specifically, a R&B song called Lois Lane by Keone Madrid) and choreography. I really liked the structure of this video and how it connects these different aspects of art. The way the video is organized really makes it a great combination of spoken word and movement. It starts off with Rudy Francisco reading the poem out loud. He reads it with a strong tone and emotions, and this really sets up the setting of the overall theme of this video, which is love. Another reason why I love this video is because of the beautiful song that accompanies the dance; their choreography is so smooth! Some of their dance moves reflect the lyrics of the song, which I thought was really cool. I also thought it was interesting how they made choreography to this song, which is different from the usual hip hop, upbeat songs people dance to.