Artist Lisa Blatt will be visiting the art department to give a lecture about her work, which is predominately video art.
Blatt will be presenting on Oct. 28 at 12 p.m. in the Contemporary Art Gallery. Her art explores the idea of a sense of place, specifically the feeling of place after events have happened there. Whether the feeling is from a childhood memory or a monumental historical event, sense of a place has an effect on human emotions. Blatt’s work is narrative-driven and focuses on concepts and ideas, which shows students how to improve their own work.
Gallery Director Dale Newkirk believes that Blatt’s lecture will help art students improve upon using conceptual ideals and that it is important for students to see how other artists think and develop ideas regardless of the medium.
“Once you develop an idea, it may be that this notion will work well in painting or sculpture,” said Newkirk. “You may find yourself needing video at sometime. In the contemporary art world today it’s less specialized. Fields are less specialized and artists do different bodies of work in different mediums depending on the ideas they’re working on. The art world today is less inclined today to have someone say, ‘Well, I’m just a painter and that’s all I do.’ You don’t know what ideas you may require in the future. It’s not only about medium, but about idea development and visual language.”
The New Media Room of the CAG currently houses one of Blatt’s videos titled, “Spinning on Enola Gay Runway Until I Make Myself Sick.” In the video, Blatt is on the runway where the military secretly trained, loaded, took off and dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. The video is filled with wind noise and fast spinning motion, giving the viewer a feeling of sickness.
Blatt will be speaking with new media and animation students about their work after the lecture and giving critiques. Newkirk explained all students could benefit from the out-of-state professional artist.
For more information on the upcoming guest speaker, you can visit Blatt’s website at Lisakblatt.com