6 Books

Works Cited

Augaitis, Daina. Brian Jungen. Berkeley, CA: Douglas & McIntyre, 2005. Print.

Brian Jungen's book is proving to be a very handing thing to be carrying around. I truly have been getting inspired by his Air Jordan mask work. The attention to detail, the awe inspiring forms and faces that he creates out of this ready made material has been helping my creative intuition return to normal after a slow uninspired start. I have been working with sculptural ideas with my studio practice, everything from dissecting a skateboard, to the breaking down of bicycle parts into geometric forms and removing the parts from its original context, to possibly creating football, hockey, and baseball inspired forms and photographs. The sculptural ideas are to be photographed of course and presented as a print.

Bedford, Christopher. Mixed signals artists consider masculinity in sports. New York: Independent Curators International, 2009. Print.

This is a book that explores the ideas and concepts of sports, masculinity, ritual male behavior, and there's even a feminist critique of the male dominated sports and iconography that goes hand in hand with our Western culture and its impacts on global sporting events. The book covers many artists that deal with these issues and goes in depth about them, which then reveal certain aspects of the male dominated sports world and the homophobic and even homosexual tendencies in which modern day sports thrive upon.

Chua, Lawrence. Paul Pfeiffer. Actar; 1st edition. 2009. Print.

Paul Pfeiffer, Photographer and Video artist, has just recently come to my attention due to his upcoming lecture here at VCU, in which I will be attending. I like how he explores the Sports world and arena as a form of public theatre. His series "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" are taken from the National Basketball Association archives, where he then removes all insignia, corporate branding, other players, and team affiliation and has raised one nondescript player onto this pedestal of greatness and stardom and celebrity. He removes the context and narrative from the image (a thing that a photojournalist covering sports would never do) and relies on the kinetic bodies of these athletes untethered to the context of the game.

Herrera, Arturo. Arturo Herrera. Birmingham: Ikon, Distributed by Cornerhouse Publications, 2007. Print.

Painters are always a harder artist to find in relation to my work, but I really enjoy the works of Arturo Herrera. He at times can be very minimal like in his painting "Lomo" (2006), but also and mainly it seems relies on a sort of gestural approach to his paintings and collages and uses old news paper clippings as a backdrop for the vivid color scheme that is implemented into his work. At times his work reminds me of a mix of calligraphy, drawing, and almost juvenile line work. The mixed media pieces are my favorites by far for their bright colors, graffiti-esque style and at times almost propaganda looking aesthetic. That combination seems to be drawing my attention as of now for its blatant DIY aesthetic.

Kingston, Maxine Hong. Woman warrior memoirs of a girlhood among ghosts. New York: Vintage International, 1989. Print.

I have selected this novel for a certain amount of reasons. First it has great attention to detail in its description of Kingston and Brave Orchid and their stories and tales of legend. I also enjoy the memory recall in this story, it's so vivid and passionate it really challenges me to delve into my past and my roots to try ad figure out what the common "vehicle" is in my art practice, which at times seems to allude me and my ability to expand on certain aspects of my work.

Marchand, Sandra Grant. Jerome Fortin. Geneva: Musee d'art contemporain de Montreal, 2007. Print.

Jerome Fortin is an artist I found on a whim, but his art is very interesting to me. He creates thousands of mini triangles from maps, graphic novels, comic books, and minimal color fields and spaces. The re-contextualizing of these images and creation of an entirely new and massive art piece. The scale, size, and detail of these images are motivating me to create and re-contextualize my own passions of sports in life, and I hopefully will.