Reaction paper (Greg Stahly) - Essay Example

He identified himself as a ceramic artist, a term that I had never heard of, and even though many of his products are displayed in museums, I still hold the opinion that his works are not artistic. Greg’s products however exhibit some elements of art. I consider his soda vapor glazing, a work that involved pottery, as his artistically richest work. Even though the product involved handwork creativity skills, its artistic elements are realized in its design process rather than implementation of the design to develop the product.

Greg also associates himself more with creation of products for use. He for example creates bowls from which people can eat, watering ports for watering flowers and develop color schemes to capture people’s attention. His soda vapor without glazing was particularly outstanding and neat. It only applied a particular type of firewood with diversified natural colors that were derived from flames, parts of the wood and ash. Even though a distant glance of the work would not captivate, a closer approach to understanding the coloration identifies the quality in the product.

Mixing of colors is the basis of this particular piece of work. Another identifiable feature of Greg’s work is that his products offer tangible utility. They are not merely commodities to be seen but are things that are applicable in daily life processes. His works therefore puts me in a dilemma as I fail to understand the precise difference between a person who makes products and a person who invent products towards development and sale. The concept of ceramic art also confuses me because even though I can comprehend aspect of art as implied in the works, I do not understand how the works can be generally considered art.

This is because Greg develops his products without outlined motive. Examples involve his development of inflatable shapes and suspending them in a museum without a clear intent. Even though he later developed an understanding from his Cadaver bags that he tried to lift but fell down to six feet, such a theme of communicating aspects of death was not in his intentions at the time of developing the bags. I therefore hold the opinion that Greg is just an explorer who delights himself in making funny items and observing how his made items operate.

This, in my opinion, is a development of products for physical utility and not art. ‘50 ways in’ is another of Greg’s works that appears to be controversial to me with respect to artistic consideration. The work only exhibits a few elements of artistic development and induces the dilemma of whether to consider it artistic or not. It was developed from ceramic, latex tubing, case rubber, aluminum, and 120 tubes and is identifiable with 50 eyeballs with tails that converge to a focal point on a wall.

The work’s theme was to illustrate 50 of ways locating a particular point and even though the work’s title was captivating, the theory behind it, and the way in which Greg explained it is not. Greg for instance explained that every eye was the size of a grape fruit or one of the larger groups of fruits, a statement that identifies ambiguity. His other presumed art regarded construction of pipelines and aerial view of the city. He demonstrated diagrams of both pipelines and electrical line from an aerial view.

The aim of such a development was to illustrate underground installations and even though he demonstrated an understanding of involved appliances, this work closely identifies with construction than it does with art.