Art is a way for people to express their ideas and views. Art can come in many forms: sculptures, paintings, dance, music, etc. For me, I believe that art isn’t limited to the visual and performing arts, but it can be found in what may seem to be boring things, like math, politics, and science. At first, I saw art as something that people can enjoy in their free time rather than something that can be meaningful. After this semester, I can see that there is more value in art than enjoyment, but rather another outlet of sharing ideas and communicating with others.

As a child who grew up in a family that valued academics, I did not spend a lot of time indulging in visual and performing arts. Even though I developed a hobby for drawing, I would not consider making drawing my job. However, even though my family did value academics, we still indulged ourselves in books and literature like “Harry Potter” and “Percy Jackson”. No matter how much you want to avoid art, there’s no way to not be exposed to it in one way or another. For many people, their exposure to art mainly comes from school or simply walking through a city with man-made sculptures with intricate systems built into it to make it function. The type of art I like to surround myself with is anime and music. I like the aesthetics of anime and the themes that it can explore. In terms of music, I think I like songs that have some structure but are not terribly repetitive.

Going to the SOA Galleries, I think my perspective of art changed. Some of these artists’ perspectives were interesting. Many of the artists I talked to used their exhibits to share their experiences or make a statement. Because of these experiences and conversations, my perspective of art has changed. It taught me that communication doesn’t have to be oral, but it can come in many forms, art being one of them.

Overall, I believe that art is a way of communicating, but whether people can appreciate different types of art or not is up to personal preference. While this class has enlightened me, I cannot say that I appreciate art leaps and bounds than how much I appreciated it before. Needless to say, I believe that art should not be taken for granted and should be given more thought from the public.

I was trying to go for a casual but a semi-formal picture. I think I was mostly successful. I couldn’t find the right environment for my picture since I don’t have a picture or office of my own so I took it in my own house. I think next time, I would try to look for other places of my own to take the picture.

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Artist name: Taliin Tanelian

Program: Master’s in Art and Illustration: Animation

Exhibition Name: Jinja

Media: Digital, Photoshop

Gallery: CSULB School of Art, Werby Gallery

Website: tabbytoons.com

Instagram: tabbytoons

Art by Taliin Tanelian

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Once upon a time, there was a small black fox who lived among a village of bears. When he was a small pup, he was taken in by two brown bears. The two brown bears took the black fox as one of their own and raised him along with their cubs. Although the fox had no recollection of his own parents or family, he lived happily with this family of bears.

As the fox grew up, he began noticing many differences between his family and himself. Blake noticed that he was not as strong as his family members. He also noticed that he was not as big or as wide as him.

When a villager came of age, they would find a role in the village, whether it was being a fisher, a hunter, or a builder. Because the small fox did not have have the same qualities as the other bear villagers, he could not participate in many of the activities that the bears partook in like discus throwing or wrestling.

One day, the fox decided to leave the village, feeling he had nothing to return to the bear village. The fox had wandered for a long, long time. Since the fox was on his own, he had to learn to survive by himself. Although he could not lift heavy objects, he could find a way around them. Although he could not reach the branches on his feet, he could climb the tree rather quickly. Although he could not fight off large predators head on, he could outrun them or outsmart them. During his travels, the fox found many mysterious places, many scary places, and many peaceful places.

Soon, the fox stopped thinking about the weaknesses he had and focused on the strengths he had. One day, when it started raining, the fox entered what seemed to be an empty cave. Inside the cave, the fox found an orb of light. The fox decided to follow this bright light and chased it. The orb led the fox back to the village, which was currently experiencing a flood.

The fox ran back to the village and his family as fast as his legs would go. The fox put his adopted bear family on a raft along with some other bear villagers that he could fit. One all the villagers were on a boat or raft, the fox led the bears to another location to live in since the last location was destroyed by the flood. The bear villagers were forever thankful for the fox and the fox found a role for himself, a navigator.

I think my experience with drawing was fun. When I have free time, I sometimes like to draw. The activity was a little frustrating because of all the detail I wanted to add but didn’t have time to include, but otherwise fun. I think if I had lots and lots of hours of practice drawing, I would probably do a lot better. As a math major, I think learning to sketch is helpful when trying to illustrate mathematical ideas accurately.

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I was trying to go for a friendly, casual video but it ended up awkward and short. I think I would try to explain things in more detail and try to find something that I can talk about next time. No, I don’t want to vlog ever again because I usually stay in my room all day and I have nothing to talk about.

The Graffiti Writing was fun. First, I took some poster paper and cut out the words. Then I put it over another piece of poster paper and sprayed it over. I had to use two different papers to fill in the holes in some of the letters of my names. Overall, it was a pretty fun experience. I had to use a mask because I didn’t like the smell of the spray paint.

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The current exhibition at the University Art Museum at CSULB is “Call and Response, When We Say… You say”. The curators of this exhibition are Karla Diaz and Mario Ybarra, Jr. The collection of pieces comes from many artists such as Kim Abeles, Richard Bosman, Patricio Cabrera, Albert Contreras, Adolph Gottlieb, Graciela Iturbide, Lee Krasner, Piotr Kowalski, Ken Light, Ken Price, Lorna Simpson, and Andy Warhol and guest artists such as Abel Alejandre, Valerie J. Bower, Karla Diaz, Gabriel “Gobs” Fernandez, Alonso Garzon, Rosalie López, Antonio De Jesus Lopez, Aydinaneth Ortiz, Marlene Tafoya, Arnoldo Vargas, and Mario Ybarra, Jr. The exhibition features pieces that stem from the experiences of many different artists.

The exhibition was arranged in a way that was meant to transition smoothly as you walk through the museum. For example, in the entrance, you can find the same jagged lines near the entrance of the walls and a fence with a similar shape when you go further in. There are also repeating colors in the exhibition. The Curator of Education at CSULB, Christina Alegria, says that the curators of this exhibition wanted viewers such as myself to look for many of these patterns. Another example of finding repeating patterns and colors is the the faces that can be found in the piece, “Weirs at Dawn”, and the similar looking masks by Alonso Garzon.

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Many of these pieces stem from artists’ experiences or capture their experiences. For example, the pictures taken by Valerie J. Bower depict the lowrider subculture in her community. The masks by Alonso Garzon and the jagged fence play with the idea that, according to Alegria, we’re keeping ourselves in and trying to protect ourselves from the outside. However, doing so hurts us because we’re not allowing ourselves to experience the world and expose ourselves to new ideas, and thus alienating ourselves. In the “Propping Shit Up” piece, the artist, Abel Alejandre, comments that there are antennas on the subject because he feels alienated.

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Overall, I liked my experience in the University Art Museum. I liked how the pieces were put together in a way that was supposed to transition smoothly. I also liked the amount of exposure the viewer gets from the paintings from driving around to photos of different people, depicting people and experiences in a community to commentary about society and struggles. I think getting to see all that was a pretty good experience because seeing exhibitions with more variety opens one’s eyes to different perspectives.