CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, NORTHRIDGE Cool-A-Coo A
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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. iv 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 western 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.