Artist Lecture: James Sienna

Today's lecture, by James Sienna was provided by the Painting & Printing department. I was pleasantly surprised. I feel I can always relate and understand painting more than photography, I am not sure why. I have never been a trained painter but it's something I enjoy doing. Many of the things Sienna said, I felt were directly related to how I felt about my work.

Sienna as a teenager would go hiking and take pictures (same as myself) which was his introduction into art. He said the first think he learned to draw were the shapes of the mountains. Then he said: Nature is unaware of itself - its everything and the life in within it is intricate and beautiful. Looking at his work, you wouldn't understand right away that it works closely with nature but I can see the correlation, the repeated patterns, textures, intricacy and complexity.

When he first began painting, he enjoyed creating his own materials. He created his own paint by making it out of hair, gravel, dirt and coffee grounds which he called: process art. He had a growing interest in the intricacy of decay (which my newest project is focusing on) and the impermanence (which I mentioned in my C- worthy powerpoint).

Sienna tends to work small, which he calls, reasonably sized and working with the juxtaposition of industrial materials against the handmade.

When he first started creating, he was against titles because he felt that it can point the viewer in the wrong direction but eventually didn't care and started naming his work with the feeling that: if the work is strong enough, it will speak apart from the title.

I felt that his work had a lot of movement and depth which someone else in the audience later mentioned as well. Sienna seemed confused by that, saying he hadn't heard it before. He feels that its about 2D art and enjoyed the fact that he felt his pieces could be pulled apart (when referring to "The Combs" series).