Artist: Micol Hebron
Media: Feminist movement
Website: micholhebron.com
Instagram: unicornkiller1

Micol Hebron is an “an interdisciplinary artist whose practice includes studio work, curating, writing, social media, crowd-sourcing, teaching, public-speaking, and both individual and collaborative projects” from her website bio. She is heavily involved in Feminist movements for a good cause and for those who don’t have a voice.

Micol Hebron’s art is really creative and natural. She creates art through pictures expressing her gender equity beliefs. It is a bit disturbing at first because in all honesty, It is something you don’t expect unless you know the story behind it. She rarely includes painting, drawing, sculptures, etc. but work is based in social media, performance, video, digital media, social interaction, happenings, and the construction of platforms for anyone to reach out to her and nowadays everyone uses social media, so her art work impacts these kinda of platforms a lot easier and effectively.

Herbons ideas are quite relatable with mine. One idea she has that I agree with a lot is that women should be allowed to express themselves how ever they want. If they want to be topless, they can just like men are topless and do not receive hate for showing their nipples. Both men and women have nipples, we are humans with different bodies but the closely the same parts. We all have legs, arms, and a head. There shouldn’t be any action taken against women for showing their nipples in contrast to men showing their nipples. Her art work is very direct and shows a type of resilient in continuously pushing the movement for “free the nipple”.

I like her artwork a lot and the meaning behind it as well. I believe women shouldn’t be put down because they want to have a voice and express themselves in a different and unique way. Women are powerful and so are men, with the same equality everything will be perfect. Unfortunately the world does not work that way, we can only do so much before society will come reign terror for something they don’t agree with. That is why I believe her artwork is powerful, no matter how many times the pictures of Hebron, being topless, were taken down, she continued to upload the same pictures but following social media guidelines. There is always a way around things and due to that, women have found ways to effectively have their voice heard.

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Although the materials used in this project weren’t really found objects on the floor or anything but were multipurpose materials. My old high school robotics team from downey high school, have committed in making face shields for our local downey hospital and others in need that are essential workers.The materials used are small surgical tubing, acrylic sheets, white foam used for upholstery or cushioning, Xerox Transparency sheets and elastic. These aren’t materials found outside but I believe that since these are multipurpose materials found in stores or hardware stores. I decided to talk about this because I believe it was a lot more important due to the fact that I am contributing in saving lives and preventing the spread of the disease in a safe way during this pandemic. This piece of art expresses my dedication in giving back to my hometown keeping others around safe for my community. It is quite hard to determine how long a kiss, great meal, work of art, marriage and human lifetime should last. Its all through experience, if you like it you will stay, if not then sadly you would leave. I miss the old camera-free moments in middle school, when snapchating was just coming up behind instagram in 7th grade. To experience art in times like those felt a lot different than how it is today: you see something and you record it. I believe clean water, air and land should be sustainable and long lasting because we live on Earth and to be damaging it is like someone going to your house and doing what you don’t like. One person can definitely make a difference in partially solving global problems and that person can heavily influence many to get together and solve the global crisis.

In my vlog, my goal was to record what I usually do daily from waking up to the end of the day. Throughout the video, I really don’t do much, which kind of sucks because it felt as if I had no content whatsoever. To make it interesting I added a clip of me gaming to show what I do everyday. I would definitely have set times when to record and have my phone in hand, for the next time I would possibly vlog. My cousins love vlogging so it’s not a strange idea to me, I find it fun but it can be time consuming if it is your hobby. My current favorite youtuber is Devin Niemela. His content consists of buliding cars, usually surrounding the specific car model the Mitsubishi Evolution. He goes through a lot from building engines to painting cars, to me, he can do pretty much anything. With the help of his girlfriend, he can tear a part an evo engine completely and put it back together withing 3 hours. It is amazing that no matter how much work or time it takes to do something, determination will always come in to help you achieve the goals you want. He is a great editor as well. Authenticity means how much of the object or person is true to others around you. You want to be true to yourself how you are with others, you never want to be changing your personality or anything at all when you are with different people. Yes, if you are in a professional environment you will not act goofy but be mature for that scenario. Performance means an act of some kind. When you perform, you practice or go over certain lines in order to come out successful. You do improvise a bit during a performance unless you have practiced to make everything perfect. Both authenticity and perfromance can exisit together because in human nature it is normal for people to act comfortable around certain people but yet again if they are in a situation where that is not possible, you will “try” to act different. Down below contains the link to this weeks activity vlog.

• YouTube

Cognitive map of Cal State Long Beach

Automatic Drawing

This project was really fun doing it with my sister. Since we had no huge paper to really work on or any type of pastel paints, we used a normal size sheet of paper and a marker. My sister loves drawing so this was a great experience for her, helping my out with my college level classes while she is in kindergarten. We both had fun but I believe she opened her eyes at times as she continuously laughed. It is strange to how 2 brains that work together doing the same activity, can lead to cool stuff.

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Artist: Mahsa Soroudi
Exhibition: Nature’s Cadence
Media: Nature
Website: http://www.mahsasoroudi.com

Masha Soroudi is an Iranian artist born in Tehran, the capital of Iran. Born in 1981, right after the Islamic Revolution, Masha grew up traveling around the world, mainly around Asian countries, being affected and having neutral feelings towards the revolution and finally settling in Southern California.

Masha’s art in the form of nature is quite comforting and calm. Although her art is does not seem exciting and doesn’t yells out any type of crazy feelings or emotions, the story behind it makes it easy for everyone to relate in some way even if it is not that deep. Her art shows nature’s growth and fun colors and smooth textures that give a sense of calmness behind. It may be at a small scale but don’t judge too quickly.

Masha is an immigrant, just like many Southern Californians, that seemed to have trouble finding her identity as she travels far from home. Leaving her homeland, led to emptiness in her life, affecting the settlement a lot more than usual. Her plants can relate to what she has been through as well, struggling to grow in an strange environment, difficulties in having proper nourishment, failure to properly grow from your roots and finally being able to move on from a setback. Most of these are exactly what many of us, including myself dearly, go through and change our lives indefinitely towards the end.

This is the type of art that I can truly appreciate the most because it is so simple and really unique. The creativity of it is endless, you can go on about many different reasons as to how this can affect you. Since the artist got inspired from feeling empty and homesick, this plant greatly represents what she has been through. From the plant growing normally, to the final result being a strange outcome of what you expected is what life really is about. I’ve had personal struggles that this plant clearly shows such as the broken stem, the gorgeous leafs and the weak but yet strong root that continues to grow out of the vase, is what perfectly portrays what I have been through in a very unique way although the art is very broad. This is what truly represents art in my opinion

Artist: Benjamin Kaita
Exhibition: Nuccio Group
Media: Drawing and Painting
Gallery: LBSU School of Art, Dutzi

Benjamin Kaita is an undergad student currently in the Fine Arts: Drawing and painting. His interest is currently invested in his time with art. He likes to explore relationships by being connected or being aware of how distant he is away from people or things.

Kaita has an interesting view point in drawing art. Most of his art is extremely detailed and seems like it takes an eternity to make. He really does noy have any time to do things other than drawing art and the outcomes are worth it. Kaita’s art is in black and white, gives off a subtle feeling while inspecting the magnificent drawing. His drawings are mainly consisted of shading and heavy dark lines all around. They look extremely realistic from far away but up close you can point out the shading and lines drawn out.

Benjamin Kaita is heavily interested in human being’s relationship to nature. His art definitely shows this because of the amount of detail that is put into teh drawings itself. It is quite interesting that his drawing shows how we distance ourselves with nature. We only do this due to the increasing of urbanization.

The type of art that Benjamin Kaita produces is clearly unbelievable. His art has looks extremely realistic, you don’t realize it’s just a drawing. Kaita’s art is much more than a drawing as they depict many messages towards the viewer him or herself. This is by far the best drawing I have come across personally. It is a great experience because you tend to lose yourself in your own thoughts about what is going in the drawing.

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The city of Downey can be filled with great places to visit and to hang out with friends. I grew up going to schools in Downey for my elementary, middle school and high school years. Now that I have graduated from Downey High School, I have noticed a lot of changes that have occurred since I first lived in the city when I was 10 years old. It is a bit sad to see that the poverty community has been growing in the past years, as I was involved in my high school’s clubs that have events that help those in need of a home or food. It can happen to anyone, even those with stable families, and I choose to talk about this to spread the awareness for many of those who aren’t grateful or seem to care about the homelessness that surrounds the city. I believe I could have done better in a way where I could’ve helped more homeless people in affording food but sadly my budget of spending is not enough for every person I see. The last image was the best out of every picture that was posted because we get to see the reaction of him getting a nice meal that he probably have not had in a good while. Although we wanted to respect his privacy and identity we did not want to take up close pictures to make him feel uncomfortable. The image of us giving the man food helps us tell the story a lot better by getting our intentions across the reader. A different story I would be interested in telling is local community sports that teens and older adults are involved in during the weekends or weekdays to stay in shape and be active.

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This activity was certainly fun and frustrating. Fun, well because of the drawing part. There was no mistakes really, if you messed up you would just use it to be more creative, not boundaries were present as you drew what you saw. The frustrating part was the blind contour drawing. You just couldn’t see what you were drawing as you looked at the object or person in front of you. Since erasers were not allowed it made it even worse, I began to feel anxious to fix the whole drawing and start all over again. With hours of practice in blind contour drawing, would not be as hard as it was when you first tried it. Drawing will most certainly help in my Aerospace major. If I need to draw a simple sketch of an idea or an object, with depth and perception, then someone else reading or inspecting the sketch has a understanding of what I want to show.

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Artist: Cassandra Aguilera
Exhibition: Group Exhibition
Media: Metal and Jewelry
Gallery: LBSU School of Art, Gatov Gallery West

Cassandra is an undergrad student currently, in the studio art program at CSULB. She is very joyful and seems like nothing in the world could get in the way. As I began interviewing her the first question I asked her was “What ideas does their work explore?” she said, “A lot of my stuff is conceptual, but I feel like most of the subject of my work surrounds mental illness, when you look at it you’re just like, “oh it’s this” or “oh it’s that” but usually, I have a deeper meaning to it in which you wouldn’t be able to know what it is by just looking at it. If i were to explain it to you, it would make a lot more sense.” Which is true as I was looking at her piece of art, the more she explained it, the easier it was to understand the story behind it. The next question I asked was “Your art does not look simple, what makes you go this far in creating your art?” her answer was, “My work represents what mood I am in at the time. I was feeling kind of broken while making this, that is why there are cracks being tied to show the process of being put back together. Events that go on around me influence what I make as well.” Her piece does seem complicated but the meaning behind it is a lot deep than what you expect. My last and final question I asked was “What do you physically do to be focused on working a single project?” her reply was, “If I want to work on my art, I will work on it. I’ll be working in the studio from 6-10 hours straight without distractions.” Cassandra is very determined in studying art, which shows the positive outcomes with her piece of art.

Cassandra’s Metal bowl is highly detailed and seems very difficult to even try doing what she had in mind at the time. Her piece looks very rough in texture with all the jagged curves and uneven patterns. The color is quite dark which catches your eye immediately as you begin inspecting on what this is. The very small details of the stitches and bandages give you a sense on what the backstory is behind her art.

Her piece of art shows a representation of being broken and putting yourself back together slowly and surely. As you look closer at the detail of the stitches on the bowl, it doesn’t show an even surface from the edges that it is bringing together. This shows how each wound you come across will not heal perfectly as you want it too, but it will definitely fix the separation correctly with time given to do so.

This exhibition overall was a great experience. Although I saw a lot more pieces that looked very interesting, I wish I could’ve talked to every artist about their piece. This exhibition shows how actual everyday life usage of materials we use can be created into extraordinary objects that have you in amazement.

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