Artist Essay #2 Barry McGee

Barry McGee, aka Twist, is a well known graffiti artist. His is most notable known for his saggy, sleepy, eyed homeless man shown in the series of pictures above. Through his art he shows life on the streets, in this quote from PBS off of the Art 21 series, “He views graffiti as a vital method of communication, one that keeps him in touch with a larger, more diverse audience than can be reached through the traditional spaces of a gallery or museum.” Anyone can respect that. His art pieces are shown throughout the U.S on museum walls, homes, brick walls, and trains. His art captures a time and place most of us can not see or understand, through his art we see hard ships, story telling, and making fun of the government. His work seems to transcend the ghetto to the museums of Minneapolis and California in one flew swop of artistic skill, as well as traveling the train cars of all the major locomotive businesses. Contemporary Urban art is what PBS Art 21 labels him as, even though he’ll gladly take a paint can and sharpie over a paint brush and pencil or other professional artistic implement tool.

Artist Essay #1 Matthew Richie

Matthew Richie is almost indescribable, his work, from what I got off the PBS’s Art 21 website http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/ritchie/index.html, tries to embody the universe, from all forms of art including, painting, drawing, digital, sculpture, and metal works. I’m not too sure what to say about Richie’s art, it could be that I don’t comprehend it, which is most likely the case, but even in my ignorant state there is something on a semi-barbaric level that is utterly, intoxicating about his art work. The free form of simple lines draws me and embraces me with a wanting for discovery, and shows me a completely elaborate world with its own direction, all while following a simple black line on a white wall. I don’t understand what he is trying to convey through his art, all I see from his art is off the explicit surface of his pieces. The lines, colors, the simplicity, the two dimensions, the third dimensions, the wanting to understand his pieces, too know why that particular line cross over the other, does it tell a story, a narrative, is it of fiction or of history. I may not comprehend what Richie is telling me, but I know one thing… I like it.