CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, NORTHRIDGE

Cool-A-Coo

A graduate project submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements

For the degree of Master of Fine Arts in Art, Visual Arts

By

Anthony Ciarlo

May 2019

The graduate project of Anthony Ciarlo is approved:

______Professor Timothy Forcum Date

______Professor Patsy Cox Date

______Professor Samantha Fields, Chair Date

California State University, Northridge

ii

Acknowledgements

Dear #12,

Hey bud, hope you’re well.

What an insane two years, dude. We worked together through all the dust, strange vibes, and over hearing neighbors trash talking, which will all be in the past. You were a haven at times. Sure, it was cramped inside of you, but a lot got accomplished, now that I think about it, a lot. Once I realized we were stuck with one another, I panicked by how small you are, which certainly presented many challenges for the scale of works to be made. Before I moved in, I had a vision of myself working inside of you, with the door closed, and all my paint tubes scattered all over your floor. I saw myself from above. I was pacing back and forth. I’d apply paint to canvas and step back, look, and repeat. That was the rhythm I saw, and that’s the rhythm of how I work. However, I saw myself pacing, crouching, jumping, leaping, laying, hunched, tired, stressed out, greasy, and smelly, while making paintings in your space. Guess what? This vision I had of myself became true. We were a good duo, and I can easily say that there was no wasted moment.

You may be an undesirable small studio space to most, but not to me, you are more than that, you’re my brother now. By the time you read this, you’ll be patched, painted, cleaned, and all back to your former state, close to that, I hope. We did it, man! Now what?

Don’t forget about me. I know I won’t forget about you.

Much love,

Anthony

P.S. Thank you for tolerating the David Crosby print-out I taped on to your door. He was my eyes when I wasn’t there.

iii

Dedications

For my mom.

Your support means the universe to me. I’m totally delusional to pursue a career in art, and the

fact that you believe in me and support my pursuit strengthens my universe.

There would be no way to have done this without you.

You’ve been with me every step of the way.

You helped me build the path for this.

I love you, mom.

Also, for Pfeiffer, Bronson, and Alley.

The best thing about coming home from long days spent in a cramped studio feeling drained

emotionally and physically is you. I thought about each of you every minute I was away.

You are my family. The magnificent trio. The pack. I love you.

Dad, you’ve always been there for me in this pursuit.

I think you may have enjoyed playing Batman on SEGA more than I did.

I love you.

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Table of Contents

Signature Page ii

Acknowledgements iii

Dedications iv

Abstract vi

Introduction 1

Cool-A-Coo 2

Part One: Candy Cane Lane 2

Side A: Butterflies and Pot Brownies 10

Big Sur 15

Side B: Cool-A-Coo 16

Part Two: Nihilistic, but agnostic through a Spielbergian lens 20

Part Three: Awakenings 38

Side B of Awakenings: The Pink Turd 40

Works Cited 46

Appendix A: 48

Appendix B: 49

Appendix C: 50

Appendix D: 51

Appendix E: 52

Appendix F: 53

Appendix G: 54

v

Abstract

Cool-A-Coo

By

Anthony Ciarlo

Master of Fine Arts in Art, Visual Art

An ant perched on an anthill, looking yonder while the sun sets, has a relationship contingent on that hill; it comprises the labor and time to build it and the births and deaths of ants in the process. Most notable is the ants’ relationship to the earth, what the earth provides and takes away from the ants. My methods of making, whether painting, sculpture or other media, approach concept through the same lens as that ant. My relationship with the work, and through the act of making it and the energy and time required, establishes many codependent interrelationships of materiality, form, content, and the body, all situated on the ground, just like the ant on an anthill.

vi

Introduction

I am not trying to make a point, none whatsoever, which is ultimately liberating.

Spaciousness, room to breathe, freedom to go where I please; I seek a creatively nomadic life of sorts. Through my quest and fully equipped with unanswerable questions, I obsessively venture toward that pleasantly elusive horizon line. The unknown can be magical, scary, sincere, or a complete disaster, and, getting lost in its vastness, I find the creatures that become my friends.

1

Cool-A-Coo

Part One: Candy Cane Lane

I don’t want this graduate project paper to be fueled by veganism and the politics of animal rights and religion, which all reside in a shared space. The tone of this paper, whether achieved or not, and if not, oh well, but if humor and inner turmoil can peek their heads out like cute little prairie dogs, and join us, well, my job is done.

Let’s crouch down, breathe calmly, and let those cute little prairie dogs know we are compassionate and empathetic humans. I see the heads crowning; okay, let's begin.

Each story in the first section of this paper could be a foretelling of my life as an orthodox vegan, wholly considering the impact on animals and our environment (the natural world), but gently explained why through pathos and life’s poetics through the everyday, good and bad.

I will preface that this thesis shares much of my moral obligations, the same commitments that all people should acquire when it comes to loving and respecting all animals, creatures, and the environment. I do not expect people to adopt or expand on these values in their own lives, nope. Cruelty, to me, isn’t about questioning it, it’s about stopping it.

2

Sue Coe, artist, writer, vegan, animal rights activist, and human rights activist provides layers upon layers of truth to the suffering of animals and the hardship of an exploited and expendable workforce in an industrialized system of death and torture with dark politics at its rotten core.

In the book Dead Meat, Coe documents a tour of a veal slaughterhouse in Montreal:

“Veals can barely stand anyway because they have lived their short lives in a crate and been given only milk to drink, no roughage to build bones. So their bones can’t support them. The veals’ fur is usually caked with diarrhea. The person on the other side of the restraining crate is getting frustrated because the veals won’t move inside. They are two-thirds of the way in. The door keeps dropping down on them. It’s a steel door, and it keeps rising and dropping. It crashes down on their backs again and again. So the veals are getting electrocuted from behind and smashed from above. They finally go into the crate. They are squished together and can’t move. I see their ears stapled with their lot numbers. They look around wildly, making no sound, their heads are trembling, as if they have palsy. White foam is dripping from their mouths” (Coe 54).

Coe’s Animals’ Vegan Manifesto to 2 leggeds (2017), is accompanied by many woodblock printed images in the book. This reversal of the human-authored manifesto creates a restoration and autonomy of the animals themselves. The animals have all the rights in the world to formulate a vegan manifesto, which seems more holistically aligned to the natural order of things; animals should establish a vegan manifesto for humans to abide by. To be vegan does not mean you have to be a “level 5 vegan,” which was in a Simpsons episode Lisa The Tree Hugger,

(A level 5 vegan doesn’t eat anything that casts a shadow). Barbaric behavior towards animals

3 seems to have carried into modern society long since the days of the Vikings. I can only imagine how easy it would have been for Vikings to kill, harm, and impale, without the smallest moment of conscious clarity to consider the sake of the animal, no way. Now it’s up to machines to do all killing, harming, and impaling, but you need migrant workers and an easily expendable workforce to shove the animals in the compactor, and then to slice and dice all day long with sharpest of sharp knives. The same job over and over, and the killing, the blood, the guts, the screams, the fear in the animals’ eyes never cease. These grim realities are evident in Coe’s work, but through a lens that dictates the hurt and suffering through Coe’s very human understanding, and from her direct experiences observing the suffering of the animals and the workers themselves.

Historically, the birth of art materials relied on accessible resources for pigments, brushes, and sizing which varied from animal sources to plant-based. Casein paint is milk based, and traditional tempera is egg based. The entire breadth of art supplies with animal products probably requires a much more in-depth investigation to consider the various animal hairs used for brushes and pigments with animal components. My veganism is always up for re-evaluation, the reason being that many art materials and paint brushes contain animal byproducts. I try not to think about it too much, as those woes could easily become demons eating away at my soul. In the past, not as aware as I am now, I have purchased non-synthetic bristle brushes, but now, all my brushes have synthetic fibers, though some old brushes still linger. In the past, I have bought carbon black, not realizing that its pigment is carbonized animal bones, all of which is in the past, and I think about canvas shoes I’ve had that were sealed together at the seams with animal- based glue. I lacked so much awareness when I was an undergraduate student in a military-like

4 art school. I have purchased non-vegan art materials, and my argument is that once an instructor hands you a syllabus with a supply list, me (the student at the time) wants to get the right materials, although, I look back at that type of subservience and realize how meekly conforming

I allowed myself to be. Many art supplies are comprised of materials that went through various forms of animal testing, preventing certain products from ever being vegan. Titanium dioxide is an oxide that naturally occurs from titanium, and is tested on animals for consumer products, alongside with processed foods. Food is just one of many, many issues in the vegan cosmos: clothing and accessories, cosmetics, soaps, household and industrial cleaning materials, the auto industry, film & television industry, in addition to art and craft supplies. Why would anyone feel okay using rabbit skin glue as opposed to an ethical polymer sizing material? Watercolor paper with gelatin sizing needs to end.

How can a society not be transfixed by the plight of each factory animal, or a wild coyote passing by getting its leg caught in a trap set out by a hunter, or sea turtles being choked by plastic, or whales and other sea creatures dying from ingested plastics, or the U.S. law which allows hunters to shoot hibernating bears and wolves in their dens? In 2017 the U.S. Senate approved a bill allowing hunters to enter the dens of sleeping wolves and bears, making it legal for the hunter(s) to shoot mothers and cubs while they sleep. Republican voters outnumbered the democratic votes on this barbaric law.

It’s about the animals, but this selfless act of caring and love is overshadowed by what’s been underwritten, biblically, which makes it hard for many people to consider the necessary steps needed to halt our ongoing moronic predominance, as if that’ll ever happen?

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Genesis 1:26: “Then God said, let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over