MacKenzie’s Work

Hello everyone 😀

I’m excited to get to know you all while making art alongside each other.

Thoughts on the conceptual…

Over the past few years, as I have tried my hand at many mediums, I have found that there is a distinction that can be made. The final product of the artist’s labour and the process that take place in order to make a work all contribute to the viewers experience with the work. These distinctions are often what may drive an artwork. Sol Lewitt’s comments on ‘the machine’ encourage us to consider the process of conceptual art as a piece of the final work. So much of Sol Lewitt’s artistic plans require the help of other artists and hands to execute a final plan, but its that planning and cooperation that is the art work. The machine that is the idea is the artistic piece, the process and final product and equally important. The conceptuality of some of Sol Lewitt’s ideas make all the participating parties conceptual, we can ask who is the artist? What is the art? The final piece, the process, or the plan? What is the artist’s hand when there are multiple minds at work? These are some of the things that I admire most about conceptual work, the aesthetics and composition are admirable to say the least, but it is also the discussion. The emotional responses and thoughts evoked by the work deepen our connecting to the visual world and each other and we explore ideas brought forth by artists like Sol Lewitt.

Yoko Ono’s work has always be so interesting. Its always multifaceted, it always, somehow, personally striking. It always connects to me somehow. I don’t think I have any boundaries to draw, I don’t think I have any place to restrict her work, I am only a humble viewer! The artworks I see live in the viewer, the thoughts her writings and performances provoke, live on within the viewer. She puts forth both normal and out of the ordinary prompts for us the interact with the physical world, these tools she wields are all experimental. Something that stands out to me in Grapefruit is her writing style, I find that each page is a sort of poem. Her word choice and style of instruction are artistic and it’s like I can hear her speaking to me when I read them.

One Hundred Live and Die is a popular work of Nauman’s, I admire how it confronts us all with the possibilities in our existence. The volume of light fills any viewers eyes and how they react varies, but it does reminds us of many things. I think this work is framed specifically to contrast against itself. Without the combination of the “bad” (kill, hate, cry) or “good” (love, touch, feel, play) concepts, the weight of each combination would not be nearly as heavy. All these experiences and actions affect us different (and similarly) and Nauman just works to present them to us. Framed as a beautiful neon blast of light, these combinations presented all together insinuate there is no one actions that comes without the other.

Fist in Mouth also strikes me as highly interesting, though it is technically a simple motif with the addition of Nauman’s hand, it speaks volumes. I think a lot of Nauman’s work asks us to consider what we see and we naturally try to connect it to what we know or feel. This piece questions who we are without our voice or what is left behind when we are blocked of communication. Nauman’s framing allows us to take his work and form our own meaning as we see fit. I read about Nauman’s work and consider all these specific meanings and nuances that are pulled out and I imagine Nauman in his studio. With everything he produces being art and I wonder what he has hidden away in his lab, where he crafts these meaningful and emotional works, I wonder how his unseen experiments  would affect me. I wonder how he would frame them if he was required to.

Kilometre

This video is a documentation of me sitting, simply doing nothing for the time that it takes for an average person to walk a kilometre at an average pace. Growing up an only child, I spent a lot of time hanging out with myself doing things like reading, drawing, watching television etc.. My Dad would always consider these small habits as “doing nothing”. He would regularly find my in my room spending time with myself and ask why I wasn’t outside, going for a walk or doing something more involved. This never seemed like a problem to me, but to him it seemed not as productive as he would have liked.

In this video I sit in my room for 12 minutes (the average walking time of a km) and do absolutely nothing, just reflecting on such a small moment of my day and reminding myself that not every second of your life needs to be used doing something “productive”

In this time I could have walk a whole kilometre, but I didn’t, I just spent 12 minutes with myself.

This is my kilometre.

Yoko Ono Wishing Tree

After writing my wish I sealed it with wax and used a small hair clip to attached it to my one and only house plant. It recently put out a new baby leaf and hopefully the leaf and wish will emerge together.

Week 2 – I Hour Performance (❁´◡`❁)

Hi everyone! I chose this week to watch paint dry. My landlords recently erected a new room in our basement and have been finishing it up lately. The other day, they dropped by to give it a few coats of paint. After they left I snuck in and sat down on the couch, I sat for an I hour without a clock or phone and told my partner to come tell me once an hour came. I just sat in the cold basement and watched this coat of white paint dry. It was quite relaxing in a way and I quickly wanted to slip into a nap. I am not sure if it was because it was meditative or boring though. Eventually I couldn’t smell the paint fumes anymore and was just acting in time, just sitting and letting thoughts pass. I became very aware of my surrounding, I listening to the distant street sounds and the washing machine work away.

I didn’t get a photograph in the moment because no one was home, but I snapped this photo in the space to show the plainness of the room.

I feel like Marina Abromovic would chuckle if I told her I watched paint dry. I was very conscious of how difficult it must have been for her to sit for 7 hours a day, but also maybe it wasn’t, she believes so strongly that the artist is present when they are still that she is her art at the end of the day.

Week 4 – up, up and away….

For this week, I threw my groceries into the air! I literally just experimented with trying to compose something in midair, I don’t have a window high enough to throw things out of and I chose groceries for a specific reason. Basically, I got hit by a car on Saturday night on the way home from work… I am totally fine, but I keep imagining how much worse it could have been. I was walking home from work with 2 bags of groceries when it happened so I imagined a more dramatic outcome for these photos.

some test shots;

and some of my favourite compositions;

Alternative Mask

For my alternative mask, I created a cone, a sort of blinder.

I hate talking about covid and covid and everything related because the past two years of my life have been hell. The pandemic aggravated every mental illness I already had and made living borderline impossible. I short, I am exhausted, everyone is, I hate talking about the “silver linings” because i don’t believe there was any for me. It alienated me from everyone I know and separated me physically and mentally from any loved ones. I had nowhere to run, no home to move back into, I lost my job, and I didnt even experience the worst of it. I can elaborate so much more but I didn’t want to lie and say that I was feeling hopeful or blessed. This is how I truly feel about everything.

My mask is a paper cone. In order to function during the pandemic I have become reliant on my ability to use tunnel vision. Focusing on one thing, whether or not its physically or mentally, it is really the only way i have been able to stay on top of everything.

Video Portraits

Button Ideas

Artist Multiples – Buttons!

🎵Audio Project🎧 – System Regulation

For this week’s project I decided to collaborate with my partner. Both of us are quite anxious people and we express our emotions in different ways. Personally, I deal with things very mentally, until they manifest into physical feelings. My partner expresses himself very physically right away. He tends to pace, to tap, hum, whistle and pick at his hands while working. He has never been one to notice this so I invited him to collaborate with me on the piece.

The fun twist here is that he is quite musically inclined, he has a deep sense of rhythm and training on multiple instruments so music really flows out of him. He was surprised to find out how much I notice his habits of tapping out rhythms on his desk or whistling melodies absentmindedly.

I wanted to make this as a sort of ode to him, we made it together and it was such an interesting conceptual idea, but also a great way for us to combine our arts!

I also intended to keep to sounds very organic, we did our best to recreate them as naturally as possible. Almost sounding as if the song happened accidentally, the same way he usually releases his nervous energy.

Final Week – Conceptual Portraits

I created this triptych in ode to my mother. My memories of her exist only within my mind, while I was young and still developing . The mind manipulates moments once stored in the brain. It pushes and pulls information, altering what we remember. This process of compartmentalization is one that has informed my practice thoroughly. Like memories that are archived in the mind, these photographs are manipulated through photoshop. The dreamy state I achieved is representative of the feelings left behind by confusing and traumatic moments. These photographs are of my parents and I in particular, but I believe that this notion of memory, as it affects us all, is a realm in between reality and and fantasy and is applicable to all archived moments. It is a landscape created by the brain to reinforce moments that we are sure happened but may not be correct.

These conceptual portraits of significant moments in time exist to affect the emotional state of the viewer, regardless of personal connection to the subjects. They use the digital medium to contradict the physicality of the printed photograph. As the photograph exists, so does the memory, the seemingly permanent state can still be altered as it remains in flux.