Emma McLellan and Xavier Meade

This week we had two special guest visitors. Our school lecturer and practicing artist Emma McLellan and Xavier Meade, Curator of Purakura (WINTEC). I really enjoyed and absorb both talks by both visitors especially Meade seminar which he put his sense of humor and personality into his talk made me happy, laughed and enjoyed the lesson.

McLellan approaches Printmaking in a decorative way to expand her creativity. Her works has mix painting and dominantly printmaking medium. she uses a chunk of layers within her work and told the class she just likes to play with her work and see what the outcome. I was more surprised when she told the class that she doesn't know when a artwork is finished and just loves to be decorate her work. I liked the way she plays with her work because I think most artist need to relax and not get precious about their work. I learned an important lesson from McLellan talk and thats is patience because when you get older you'll get at least 1-2 hours a day to work on your artwork because of your jobs, kids, bill e.t.c.

Xavier Meade in the other hand uses Printmaking for political mindset. Meade is heavily influenced by the Mexican Muralist art movement in the 1920-1960s with Diego Rivera as the most renown Mexican artist of the time. Didn't know much about the word "Mural" so I did a little research and found out that it means "an artwork painted or applied directly into the wall, ceiling or other large permanent surface". I realized that that these were the surfaces that Rivera and others used to protest and send messages against the government. Meade explains that they're group movements still running in Mexico and they changed their form of mural art to poster form to protest, and raise political issues through different color, shapes, figures and text to emphasis the meaning or message behind each work.

I tried to find another artist who has similarities to Meade work and I found California based artist Favianna Rodriguez Giannoni. A Printmaking artist and teacher who's renowned for her posters against political issues such as racism and war (Iraq and Afghanistan). She states that her posters reflect history, struggle and social justice through graphics and has collaborated with many other artist around the world.

Her work "Resist U.S Imperialism" in 2003 is a direct statement against the U.S War. Dominant three dull colors of red representing death/blood, orange representing ethnicity, white to give a clear text message and black to help with the text statement. Her use of a young mexican man with gun shell ammo tells me she is against U.S War because it takes away families love ones and doing the government job.

The general public of California and the world have become aware of the American justice and immigration system today because of Giannoni artwork. Another of her work that I really like was "Malcolm X", she used a stencil of Malcolm X and a famous quote Malcolm X made back in the years of the Civil rights movement as her reaction to the Hurricane Katrina disaster in 2005.

http://www.favianna.com/bio/ Favianna Rodriguez OFFICIAL WEBSITE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmIrI06IMUo an INTERVIEW with Favianna Rodriguez

http://inciteblog.wordpress.com/2010/09/20/take-action-against-state-violence-against-immigrant-families/ an insight into IMMAGRATION injustice in U.S.A