Finally, I can relate to something.....

Since the beginning of this class, I have felt very lost and confused. I don't know that much about art or social action, so I have had trouble trying to make connections between the two. From the first article we read, I made little constructive opinions. I had shallow reactions towards them and was not able to get under the surface to the meaning of the art. I also felt an overwhelming negativity surrounding the subjects and I could not appreciate the things I was learning. And even in the following week, when we discussed the film "An Inconvenient Truth" and the article about the "Mud Man", I was still like "So what?" I had already known about global warming and the impending doom our planet will face and I was very unimpressed by the artist known as "Mud Man." It is only this week's reading in "In the Making" that I found something to be remotely interesting and carried a positive message, for once.

This week's artist featured in "In the Making" was Yukinori Yanagi. When I first started reading the short biography on the artist, I was bracing myself for disappointment. But instead, I was meet with a pleasant suprise. This man's artwork revolves around ants and various metaphors to life and people that he attaches to them. Now, this may not seem so impressive, but the things the artist accomplishes with common insects and the deep meaning that results is nothing less than fascinating. On the opposite page of the bio, we see the artist crouching in a large square with various red-orange markings throughout. This may not look like a masterpiece to the human eye, but that is because it was not created by a human, but by a single, miniscule ant.

I am completely blown away by what this artist has done. He has taken something so ordinary, and made it unbelievably extraordinary. He has found ways to bring concepts to life in social, political, religious, and natural realms. How powerful is that? I especially liked his piece entitled "Asia Pacific Ant Farm." In the piece, Yanagi links together many different ant farms with colored sand in them, making them resemble nation's flags. As the ants move about and in between the farms, they create trails by dragging the colored sands everywhere they go, thus uniting all the farms/ nations. Isn't the concept represented by this piece truly astounding? That all people are united, as demonstrated by ants? All I have left to say is "Wow, that is so deep."