In an interview with Laurel Jones, a second-year double major in English and Comparative Literature major concentrating in film studies and Political Science, I asked her some questions about her experience with art in different aspects of her personal and academic life. In asking these questions, it is my goal to understand the perspective of a student and someone interested in art, and how she engages with these mediums and what it means to her and in a broader sense, what it means to engage with art.
Q: All right, so tell me about your experiences with art in different mediums and settings, which can be anything like film, paintings, pottery, from middle school to now, and in both your academic and personal life.
Laurel: When I was little, I was always really interested in art, and I would go to a lot of art museums. I would draw a lot. My grandpa was an electrical engineer, and he used to do a lot of drafts for buildings, and then he taught me how to do drafting for architecture. So I’d do a lot of house drafts, which is crazy for a little kid to be doing, um, and I always liked contemporary and abstract art more than like Renaissance when I was little, just because it looked like something I could probably do, but it's, it's a lot more than just what you can do with it. So I’d go to a lot of contemporary art museums and took a couple of art classes in middle school. School didn't offer that many, but then I took more in high school, like art critique and film critique. And then in college, I took visual culture, and Greek mythology, stuff which was more than just the art, like the readings, but more about art depictions of that. And then film history. And now I'm in German media theory, which is just about media theory, which is just a lot of talking and arguing.
Q: What kinds of art are you generally seeing in these classes? And then any extracurriculars that involve any kind of medium of art?
Laurel: There's a lot of films that I have to watch. So there's film like earlier cinema, contemporary with all the different genres like noir, expressionist, and stuff like that. And right now in my media theory class, we're talking about photography, statues, film, as in movies, and then film photography, and then digital media, which is reproducible stuff like that. So basically, all types of art. Oh, and I do pottery, so that's just something I do.
Q: Have there been any pieces that stood out to you or left a lasting impact on how you view and connect with art?
Laurel: A lot of the readings stick out just because they're talking about art itself. A film we just watched was called “A Man with a Movie Camera” in Soviet Russia and Vertov, I think his name was. He uses the camera to show what Russia looks like, but he's not really showing what reality is, because in film, you can't really show reality because it's all controlled. Yeah, that one's really interesting because he, like, shows the process of filmmaking by showing the camera shooting a scene or showing people watching a movie, and then the camera showing them watching that. So it's just a whole bunch of self-reflection. And he also shows the editing of the movie, and then he'll show like the editor actually splicing the clips. And then he'll show like the actual film, like the scenes that she's editing so that one's sticking out to me. And then we're talking about statues right now, like the Laocoön statue from Homer, but he's talking about, like, how certain media only have a certain extent to what they can depict and what you can derive from their depiction, stuff like that.
Q: I think you mentioned to me once that you have been in Ackland for some of your classes. Are there any spaces that you were drawn to in Ackland or in any other art museums that you've been to recently or in the past?
Laurel: Yeah, the print exhibit they have right now is really good, Matisse to Dürer, I had to do an essay about one of them. I did it on “After the Bath” by Degas. I did it about that one, and it was kind of just like, throw off whatever you wanted to really write about it. But I’d write about technique mostly whenever I look at art, it's honestly not the best print in the whole entire exhibit. And I don't really think the best pieces of art, or objectively good-looking pieces of art, are the ones that should have the most discussion written about it. I think it’s more about the technique and the medium that has the conversation about it, rather than specifically what's depicting them, what how it makes you feel, but more how the artist uses that medium to debase something, especially since he doesn't use lithographs. He does oils in statues. So it's weird that he's doing a lithograph. So it's just, yeah, the prints and then upstairs, they always change that around a lot, yeah, last year, I liked it a little bit more.
Right now they have at the very front, like the contemporary art in the corner, and then they have like more contemporary, like technological one. I saw they had like a little interactive one or something, maybe. And then in the back, they have a whole bunch of prints and photographs. I think photographs are really interesting, especially in art museums, because some people would be like, photography isn't the same as statue prints or paintings. It's like, it just seems like something so much more real than an actual like other types of mediums. So I usually hear people say photography is not an art, but it is art.
Q: So you said that your love for art came from, like your childhood and your grandfather and those experiences, but translating that into people who may not have those experiences, how do you think that there could be more engagement with art in these kinds of spaces that are not necessarily user friendly to bring to beginners?
Laurel: I feel like, um, I know Ackland has a little program for kids, and I see a lot of old people there, a lot in groups, and I think they do have, like, little tour groups and stuff, especially the little like, take-home kits, like how to make stuff for kids or anybody brings the audience into it that aren't otherwise just casually going to an art museum. But the thing with that is, like art is kind of seen as, like, a highbrow type of entertainment. Which looking at stratification through classes, like in sociology, it's like it's way more likely that a higher caste of people are going to be more interested in highbrow entertainment and stuff. And low-brow entertainment is just seen as, like, low caste and stuff. It goes all the way back to, like, communism, because of high brow with the bourgeois. But it's, it's definitely something that is kind of seen as, like uh, art is definitely a privilege, and it shouldn't really be, because it was kept out of so many different communities as a way of, like, a way of keeping people down, especially with, like, communism and civil rights, but like in art, was definitely seen as a way of expression during civil rights movement, in every single movement, especially with jazz. And what is that one style of art that came from New York? People use it as a form of expression, and then there's also people that use it as a form of oppression and stuff like that.
Q: So have you had any specific experiences in any of your time spent making art, viewing art, watching things, reading things, where you felt truthfully, engaged and interested in a piece, like, through technique, like you're telling me with all of the graphs, or just like, specific interests, and what kinds of things made you interested?
Laurel: I could talk about pottery, because I'm doing pottery. Well, I mean, pottery is all around us, like we literally drink out the mugs and everything. And it's since I was really curious as a kid, and I loved Legos and I loved building things. I just wanted to be able to make something as well, or something that's like deemed useful, because most art is not deemed useful, especially with like contemporary art, people are always in discussion of whether it's actually important or not, but that's not, I mean, you having that conversation about it is literally what's making it have a purpose. But with pottery, I was always exposed to it. And also my mom is really into mid-century modern interior decor and stuff like that, or like architecture and stuff. And they have really cool vases and plates and stuff, and I was inspired by those shapes. But also in art museums, they always have pottery, because pottery has been around for so long. It's always been an art form. And, yeah, it's really interesting, because it goes from literally being nothing in the ground and you process it to something that can be formed into something. Then you have to form it, then you have to cook it, and then you have to glaze it and then you have to cook it again. But I think, the process of most pieces of art, or what actually draws me to art in general, not just the way it looks, not by saying it's “Oh, it's pretty, it means this”, or, “Oh, it's pretty why is it there?” It's more like, how is that piece made? How is the message from the artist being transferred through the medium to the actual piece? And then, how's that piece being received by everybody else? That's actually interesting.
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