mbrotherton.wordpress.com

I’m hoping to make a website collective of my work from the past few years, including recent stuff. For now my less current work is located here.

For the last week and a half, I have been dissecting a cat soaked in preservative with my Anatomy/Physiology class. I’m convinced it’s one of the most fascinating experiences I will encounter. It’s really incredible to see the depths of a living thing. It feels like an adventure every time we reopen the soggy yellow bag and reveal something new. I find that the word “interesting” is the most appropriate word, it is just an incredibly interesting experience seeing the insides.

I have been documenting each day with photographs, click here for more.

I finished an installation this afternoon.

It’s located about on a ceiling beam in a Canyon Crest art room.

I am elated that this piece is completed, as I have spent off and on about 3 weeks hovering above a classroom on a ladder to install it. It’s made up of cut paper from various books, a frame, and the phrase “Art will save you, if you fall”. I’m pretty content with it although if it didn’t involve climbing a ladder I would probably never stop working on it.

Thanks VanLier.

Filed under: art ]]> http://scarletbird.wordpress.com/2010/05/25/installation-finished/feed/ 0 scarletbird detail http://scarletbird.wordpress.com/2010/03/09/a-poem-to-the-ringleader/ http://scarletbird.wordpress.com/2010/03/09/a-poem-to-the-ringleader/#comments Tue, 09 Mar 2010 02:46:20 +0000 scarletbird http://scarletbird.wordpress.com/?p=121 ]]> The ring leader said,

Go home and listen

Listen to the night.

And let it absorb you-

Then, you will find truth.

I doubt it’s that clear.

I am young, lying, and born in a hospital.

I went to visit there, the ring, then here;

to this concrete building in suburbia.

I am the only contortionist in the circus.

The small spaces lead to smaller spaces,

More minimal, then I walk out of the ring,

Down the steps, out the tent, and I come to the dirt,

The dirty road, where I walk to this building and write this page:

It’s quite simple to know what is true for you or me at my age.

And I guess I’m not

what they feel and hear.

Ring leader I hear you:

hear me, hear me-listen-you and me, we talk on this page.

(I hear you) Me-who?

Well, I see to eating, sleeping, drinking, and being able to love.

I find food, sleep, drink, and a ring leader.

I find an ache for small places,

Or aches for the circus.

I guess being flexible doesn’t make me find

The same things others find who are brittle.

So will my page be flexible that I write?

Being me, it may crumble.

But it will be

Supple, ring leader.

The truth can change-

yet as a part of me, as I am a part of the night.

This is my circus.

Sometimes perhaps you don’t listen to the night.

Nor do I listen to the truth.

As I learn from truth,

I guess you learn from me.

Although I contort-and ache-

I am part of the night.

And the night is true.

This is my page for the ring leader

I wrote this poem over a year ago and just stumbled upon the original. It was vaguely modeled from some poem that I can’t recall. I suppose it’s an autobiography of sorts.

she jumped January 19th 1981

“things had been bad, there had been therapy, things had gotten better, guard had been let down.”

From the time  I first saw samples of her work on the coffee table in the basement, until forever, I have absorbed, and will continue to absorb muse from both her work and her story.

For a personal inspection.

What you need beyond a doubt,

Is just a good example.

One of your friends, o chosen ones,

To give a proper example,

Among the thorns which grow on the Hilcrest,

Sweet little blossom, student of students,

Happy one, ‘go, you Shirl.’

-Robert J. Brotherton

This photograph is a tumbleweed of errors in a technical sense but if it wasn’t I wouldn’t find it so appealing. As I have aged, I have found more interest in “happy accidents”, especially when it comes to artworks. This photograph is an awkward composition that I didn’t even have the intention to take. It’s curious that I have spent so much time learning the technical importance of photography when some of my favourite shots are experiments or mistakes.

I always know its December when I can dance freely with the cattle

“Through”(1983)

cellophane, aquarium, chicken wire, fishing nets, voile, glass, iron fencing

The Tate Modern in London is currently showing several of Meireles’ installation works such as Through and How to Build a Cathedral. The show is so incredibly inspiring and beautiful that I am considering prostituting myself in order to travel to London and experience it first hand.

“How to Build a Cathedral”(1987)

2,000 bones, 800 communion wafers, 600,000 pennies, 80 cement blocks, and 1 black sheet.

I came across Meireles in a book of modern sculpture I found in Barnes and Noble. I found out Cildo Meireles is a beautiful Brazilian man. His work is conceptually-based sculpture and installation worked around social commentary and censorship. Many of his most prestigious works include the installation pictured above and Red Shift(1967), which was an installation work of three rooms covered in red, exploring reactions to an entirely red environment. His walk-through designs are awe-inspiring, even just through a photograph. For years and years his art has been consistently striking and aesthetically excellent.

Photos curtsey of Tate Photography

It is not difficult to admire Baroque artist, Artemisia Gentileschi. Her biography is one of despair made into beautiful creations. Gentileschi was a trained artist by her father’s hand who most likely had exposed her to sexual abuse as well as hired her mentor, Agustino Tassi, who she was later raped and abused by. Artemisia tried to speak but the trials against her rapist later resulted in her torturing and painful physical examinations. Through all of her tragedy came beautiful and powerful works of art. Her heavily chiaro-scuro style works often depict gender versus gender situations and psychologically twisting affairs. In this painting, Gentileschi reveals her desire for revenge in a beautiful, Carrivagio-esque depiction of Judith slaying her male enemy, Holofernes. In the tail of Holofernes, the Hebrews defeated him through Judith’s sly tactics of seduction and rage. A truely femenist story, just as Artemisia painted. She painted her revenge; possibly the most exquisite revenge I have ever seen.