Christian
Aranas
Art
381
Joseph
Delappe
I attended the artist talk held by Matt
Kenyon who spoke about his various projects. I thought this artist talk was
definitely interesting. I found Matt to be somewhat of an artist that loved
creating inventions. His work spoke volumes by itself and I thought that was
pretty intense. One of his projects was a self-sustaining plant that would
water itself if and only if the stock market for, I believe, Home Depot was doing
well. I thought that was genius especially because he bought the plant form
Home Depot! Ironic that they sell plants but their stock couldn’t keep the
plants alive. This just showed how many plants were killed by Home Depot alone
due to them buying so much but not being able to provide a proper home for
them.
Another one of Matt’s projects I found
amazing was the scanner project he did. In this particular project he used
himself as a container for the art. He put a scanner in his mouth and would
scan certain things he ate. It was interesting how he had gone out of his way to
get the side of his mouth pierced just so he can create art. I loved the
concept and it showed the deception of those scanner companies that would track
how people ate.
The most impactful piece that Matt created
however would definitely be his ode to civilian casualties in Iraq. The catch
for this piece was that it was a secret memorial to these poor civilians that government
could care less about. It truly made and impact especially when he showed us
about 3 or so pages front and back of names of those killed. How he did that
you ask? By creating the lines used to write sentences as the template for the
names. Such tiny names and you look at these pages and wonder how many lives were
sacrificed, uncared for, and recklessly taken for a war that make no sense. How
epic this piece spoke to me and it made me feel like writing a letter to the
government on the same exact paper then asking them to take a microscope to
read aloud the names they didn’t care or know about.
Matt is a creative artist and that’s
what I enjoyed most about his artist lecture. I hope he continues to speak
volumes through his work and continue to impact the world about their senselessness.