I don’t always like abstract art, but I have had an obsession with Jackson Pollock for sometime. Upon hearing that there exists a movie about him called “Pollock,” I immediately watched it.

Afterthoughts? I wish I knew more of Pollock’s bio before seeing the movie, but seeing it made me want to read more about him.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmdLPLNb7Es

Check it out.

Makes you wonder if madness and genius really are related…

I love cafés. The first time I ever fell in love with cafés was probably on my high school trip to France where we lunched at outdoor cafés nearly everyday. I can’t get enough of being able to just sit for hours and people watch, draw, peck away at my laptop, or just enjoy a snack (or all of the above).

The icing on the cake, though, is probably when a local artist displays his or her work at the café - which is exactly what was going on at Aroma Café a couple nights ago. The bright and cheery interior of Aroma was further beautified by the mesmerizing colors and circular designs of Evelyne Tardy. Hers was a series of mandalas. Mandala is the Sanskrit word for “circle,” and it can also mean “whole,” “center,” or “self.”

See for yourself:

Tardy says she started creating mandalas spontaneously in 1993. About seven years later, she began to create them purposefully with specific symbols and colors to promote positive feelings and healing attributes. This series (up at Aroma) contains her interpretations of the seven chakras.

Personally, I have a bit of an aversion to bright colors. We just don’t get along. I’m more a fan of muted colors, darker ones too - but something about the circular patterns of these mandalas attracted me. And if you sit and gaze at one, they really do sort of mesmerize and calm you down.

I got to sit down her Tardy and talk to her about her series, and ask her some questions from the Proust questionnaire (my favorite!)

Evelyne Tardy

Age: 36 in August

Hometown: Chicago

Schools/degrees: B.S. in Fine Arts from Columbia College in Chicago, and M.S. in Art Education and Art Therapy from Illinois State University

How long have you been an artist/creating art? Probably since I was seven.

Tell me about these pieces. Well, I guess a brief summary would be they’re all mandalas, which is my true passion of art. It really inspires me. I mean, I’ve done lots of different types of art. I make stained glass, I do jewelry, um, fine art – I used to do figure painting a lot. I still do sometimes, but I find that mandalas combine my spirituality with my artistic skills and vision and that’s what motivates me.

It’s actually funny – I was here the other night and I’m just beginning to research the spirituality of yoga and the aum sign, and I thought, “This is perfect!” So, is this your first collection? This is actually my first series of mandalas.

Do you have a favorite medium? Acrylic. These are all acrylic paints. I do use oil sometimes, I haven’t for mandalas yet though. I might move into oils in a little bit and I want to start creating mandalas in stained glass too.

Yeah, that’d be great. So, how do you…well, I always wonder how artists go about choosing what medium they’ll use. The reason why I think I’m working with acrylics lately is because it does dry faster. I feel like…um, I like the matte finish. I’m concentrating a lot on the color…somewhat with the brush stroke…I guess just the fast-drying aspect of it. Oil painting can give you some brilliant colors too. The time aspect of it right now, and the practicality of it because when you use oil paints you have a lot more toxic materials out and I have two cats and so on. And in my tiny little apartment with those huge canvases…

How long does it take for oil paints to dry? I know it depends on color… It depends on color and the weather, sometimes a week? I do teach oil painting in my classroom and sometimes oil paintings dry over the weekend, and sometimes it takes a week or two. So it depends on how much turpentine and so forth.

This is a question I’m trying to personally answer for myself, and I always have asked it to other artists to help myself out. So, what do you think makes certain pieces or artists “good,” or worth your while to study, or see, etc…? That is a very good question, one that I always try to teach my students too. Um, I guess it depends on what you think art is and what the purpose of art is because there are so many theories out there. To me, when you look at something and it settles right with you, then that makes it worthwhile – if it speaks to you. And that’s a very broad answer, but art can take so many different forms. It can be conceptual or maybe an artist is a realist, so it’s going to depend on how realistically they depicted the image, does it look like a photograph? Or is it more emotional-based? In my art, my mandalas, it’s more about creating the kaleidoscope image so that it makes people go, “Ooh! That’s cool!” But there’s also meaning behind it too, there’s the symbolism and the color combinations. Two of my favorite artists are Georgia O’Keefe and Mark Rothko, both for their use of shapes and color, especially Mark Rothko because all he did was use color. A lot of people argue that it’s not art and why is he famous, but I love it, I love it. There’s definitely a psychological and emotional aspect to it.

What do you personally get out of creating your art and/or teaching art? Well, arts my life. And I think it can teach you so much about yourself and others and different cultures, community. Personally, I don’t think I can live without it. I’ve learned so much about myself through it and, personally, I don’t want to lead a life where I’m not helping others so teaching is important to me because I get to work with kids, I get to work with community, I get to help them grow, and arts is another strong avenue where I can help them learn about themselves. And I think my paintings, my mandalas, I’ve learned a lot about myself through them. And I also think that convey that feeling as well, or just more about yourself. Like, if you’re attracted to a certain image, then why? Like with the chakras, if you have a certain illness or something’s out of balance then you can bring that color into your life, whether it’s through painting or the clothes you wear…or something like that.

Any mentors? Dr. Fischer, a professor at ISU, she helped me grow a lot. She is a good teacher. I owe a lot to her for where I am today. My family, my students. That’s all that’s coming to mind right now.

What do you do other than create your art? You mentioned you were a teacher? Yeah, I teach at Iroquois West High School in Gilman, IL.

Could you comment on the CU as an art community? In terms of the visual arts, I don’t see any cons, really. That’s why I love living here so much because coming from Chicago where you’re constantly surrounded by wonderful artists. It was an initial shock for me to move to a smaller town (Bloomington-Normal, IL) and the culture scene there was nice, and then I got the job which is why I moved to Champaign, which is the reason why I love it. I think it’s a strong cultural community and the visual arts are supported, as well as the performing arts. I never feel like there’s a dull moment. So, I think it’s very strong here.

Now for the fun part! Some Proust questionnaire questions…

Favorite quality in a man? Humbleness. A woman? The same.

Your chief characteristic? Patience

Your idea of happiness and misery? There’s a seed of it in both, I think letting go of the ego can result in happiness.

Greatest fear? Of losing my goal towards happiness.

Trait you deplore about yourself and others? Deceit. I always try to remain a truthful person in all circumstances, so if I were ever in a situation where I wasn’t truthful, then I’d deplore that about myself.

Greatest love of your life? Romantic, are we talking about? Well, it’s a very open-ended question. Well, art!

Greatest achievement? Becoming a teacher. When did that happen? Well, my first public teaching job? 4 years ago. I taught pre-school for 4 years after I got my fine arts degree.

Your most treasured possession? My family.

Where would you like to live? Right here.

Future plans? One other series I have in mind is what I call my Italy series. It’s completely different from my mendalas. I went to Italy last summer and was very inspired by it. It’s going to be realistic, mostly.

So, are we talking landscapes here? Some landscapes, a few portraits.

Tardy is working on website and plans for it to be up mid-fall.

Like what you see? Contact Evelyne Tardy for more information or to purchase her work at evelynetardy@yahoo.com

For those that have seen Tim Burton’s version of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” maybe this is familiar:

Mike Teavee: “Why is everything here completely pointless?”
Charlie Bucket: “Candy doesn’t have to have a point. That’s why it’s candy.”

This came to mind while flipping through the Chicago Tribune Magazine a couple Sundays ago. A spread dedicated to two decadent, whimsical designer shoes (perhaps in tribute to the “Sex and the City” movie?) delighted me.

One of the shoes, a rhinestone-studded Miu Miu heel, was particularly captivating. The tiny blurb stated said “these beauties aren’t made for long treks. They’re works of art, designed to deliver you in high (even precarious) style from your front door to a waiting car. A short journey, certainly. But a glorious one!”

I loved that the shoes were called “works of art.” What’s more, the author acknowledged the fact that these shoes weren’t meant to be practical. Kind of like candy.

I don’t think that it would be right to consider anything that’s merely pretty to be art. I mean, art should have some sort of point to it, something that it wishes to express or get across to its viewers.

But sometimes, it is nice to look at something that is just breathtaking and beautiful – even if it isn’t practical (especially at $790 a pair).

I’m a Vanity Fair enthusiast (the magazine, for those who don’t know). And if you’re as obsessed with that magazine as I am, you’re probably familiar with the Proust questionnaire on the back page of the magazine. The Proust questionnaire supposedly reveals your personality. Wikipedia it.

So, as an art blogger, I thought it’d be a cool idea to do casual, mini interviews with local artists, and throw in some Proust questionnaire questions in there, too. Maybe this will make the CU art community more personal.

I went to Cakes on Walnut because I love cupcakes, and I saw Caroline Jones’ art work up. I mean, it was hard to miss the vibrant colors. So I asked one of the waitresses if I could take pictures, and she wasn’t sure, so she hooked me up with Caroline’s email address. I finally got a chance to sit down and chat with her today.

Caroline Jones

Age: 18 (I had no idea she was so young! I mean, I’m only two years older than her, but still!)

School/degree: Just graduated from The High School of St. Thomas More, will be attending Parsons The New School of Design in New York this coming fall.

Hometown: Urbana

So tell me about your pieces here. They’re from a collection I did this past year starting in January, and I finished in May. But they were for an Advanced Placement art class and we had to basically create pieces with a theme. So I wanted to do something with bright, saturated colors mixed in with really modified, contoured lines, like those black lines. For me, it was more like an experimental project because I mixed in a lot of different media. Like, the base is made with acrylic paint, and the black is oil, and I put glass. And I thought maybe by using those different elements, I would create more of a dimension since using bright colors might make it seem flat.

What were you inspired by? What were you trying to convey through these pieces? A lot of it was experimental, but I also wanted to show myself because I’m a colorful person. I like color a lot. I guess that one is really me because I like to salsa and I like to dance so I took the vibrations of the music and rhythm I put how I feel about salsa.

On the phone you mentioned you were painting the bathrooms here (at Cakes on Walnut)? Yeah, I just finished the women’s bathroom and I’m gonna start the men’s bathroom next week.

I haven’t been in there yet, but is it like, your work on the walls? Oh, no. I actually painted it with like rollers and stuff. But again, like, I used bright colors because the bathroom was really plain before, just like white walls. I used the theme of using one black line, but each wall has a different theme. I’m going to do the men’s bathroom hopefully next week, still not sure yet.

Any favorite artists or inspirations? I really like Nava Lubelski. She’s a painter. She also makes tablecloths, but she’s really experimental. She uses thread in her paintings, and cuts holes out of them, I don’t know. She’s really crazy, I like it. And I like the colors she uses.

When did you start creating your own art? I can’t even remember. I think maybe fifth grade?

Do you have any mentors? Probably my teacher that I just had and my parents.

Are your parents artists? No, but they try to inspire me. They’ll give me ideas on what I could do, or if I complete a piece they’ll really praise me for it to motivate me. They’re really supportive of what I want to do, it’s great.

Yeah, that’s the one thing that you need, you know? Support from those around you. Do you have a favorite medium? Not really. I guess I really like oils and acrylics. I think I still need to do more experimenting to find out which one I like.

So would you call yourself a painter? Not really. I’m going to be studying fashion design, so I’m more of a designer.

In your opinion, what makes art or an artist “good”? What makes a piece “good”? Something that someone spent a lot of time on. Something that has a lot of meaning. Really well rounded within the principles and elements of art, they’ve captured every piece of principle and element.

Ever hear of the Proust questionnaire? (I took the liberty of selecting a few questions from the original Proust questionnaire to ask Caroline, in an attempt to show a bit of her personality)

Favorite virtue? The only one I can think off the top of my head is temperance, I think that’s a virtue, which is self-control. This sounds really funny but it takes a lot of self-control to control eating for me and working out.

I hear you!

Favorite occupation? Friends. I love being around people and crowded areas. And I just love the interaction of different energies and personalities.

Your idea of happiness? Being loved.

Misery? Being alone.

If you were to be anyone else, dead or alive, who would you be? That’s a really hard question. I don’t know.

Where would you like to live? Probably in Spain. I’ve always wanted to see Europe, I haven’t been there yet, but I think I’d really enjoy it there. There’s a lot of culture and food and people, I’d really like that. I took Spanish for a while, and I’d really like to put it to use.

Favorite color and flower? Lavender, aqua, pink, magenta, and a celery green, or a green tea green. I like white lilies and red begonias and probably honeysuckle and lilacs. I have a lot of favorites.

Favorite painters, other than Nava Lubelski? I guess I like Salvadore Dali, I like the surrealistic style. His paintings are just out of the extraordinary. I also like Edward Hopper. His paintings are just so perfect.

Favorite composers? I listen to a lot of Latin music and some indie music.

Favorite food and drink? I like coffee and I like Asian cuisine and Italian cuisine.

Your present state of mind? Disorganized. It’s summer. I’m trying to get everything together so I can move.

Your motto? I don’t think I have one yet. I’m still trying to figure things out. I’m in that direction of discovering myself. I guess everyone is. Yeah, I’m not sure.

Future plans include Parsons? Yeah, I’m gonna study fashion design. Probably intern with some fashion designers.

Favorite designers? I like Marc Jacobs because his creations are so artistic. But I also like Oscar de la Renta. He’s so elegant and he really knows a woman’s shape.

Do you plan on any other shows? Maybe. I was thinking about starting an impressionist collection. But I don’t know how long that’ll take. Hopefully I can get it done before I leave here.

Contact Caroline with any further questions, or to purchase her work at cr_jones16@yahoo.com

I never truly thought of myself as a creative being until this past semester. I was always envious of friends who had tremendous talent in drawing, photography, poetry even – I dreamed of locking myself up inside a room and spending days splattering paint on canvases, whisking charcoal across paper and ending up with breathtaking, realistic snapshots of life. Having taken a handful of art history classes in my lifetime, I always sidelined myself and my juvenile artistic talents because I never thought I could create anything that was “right” or “brilliant.”

But I realized I had sidelined myself only because I never actually tried to create anything myself. I wasn’t brave enough to see what I had inside of me.

Upon receiving a set of acrylics, some brushes, and a pad of paper for acrylics from my best friend for my 20th birthday, I sought to release the moments of inspiration I’d accrued throughout my life. Things that people have said and have stuck with me throughout the years, the simple still life qualities of groceries in my bicycle basket, the way the lighting in my bedroom evolves throughout the day – even the way I do my makeup, whether naturally for day or dramatically for night…all of it is art to me, and I was finally ready to express myself.

The first question my Art History 115 (Art in a Global Context) professor ever posed was, “What is art?” I suppose that’s pretty much the standard guiding question for most introductory art history courses. And it’s that very question that I’ve come to ponder everyday. Art, to me, is not something that should be locked up in an ivory tower. Art should be for the people, and more importantly, from the people.

Thinking that my art had to be evaluated by “gallerinas” (yeah, I totally borrowed that word from Sex and the City’s Charlotte York) and deemed “worthy” is just what made me hesitate to make my own art.

I encourage everyone to pick up a pen and doodle on that receipt from Walgreens, or venture to Art Coop on Green Street and pick up a few supplies to get started.

The art I make isn’t necessarily for public viewing. In fact, the piece I started with my new acrylics is really personal. When I first started working on it, I was amazed at how freely my emotions and thoughts released themselves through the brush in my hand, to the paper. Even the colors I chose seemed to just flow from my deepest thoughts. I daresay painting is as therapeutic as yoga or meditative breathing.

Perhaps I’ll be brave enough to show the finished product on this blog sometime.

Hi, I’m Jean. I’ll be a junior for the 2008-2009 academic year majoring in News-Editorial Journalism. Writing’s always been a passion of mine, and so has art…pretty things, in general. Of course, it’s not as shallow as it sounds – all the time, anyway.

What’s my aim with this blog? To show others how I see the world, how I seek aesthetically pleasing objects, pieces, whatever to make my world, well, prettier.

I’m staying in the CU this summer to work on my writing and so I can get to know it better, as a community outside of Campus Town. I hope to get acquainted with the CU as an art community and want to interview some local artists so I can share their thoughts and inspirations with you.

I welcome any comments, suggestions, criticisms, etc. so comment away!