Gradina

The Role of the Generative Artist in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

March 29, 2024
Outpainting (DALL-E) collage using my art as the seed image Generative art is a new medium in the visual arts. It is performed by a computer running a generative art machine using a set of instructions from user input. Using these instructions, the program generates unique digital images. Though such…

Challenges in Writing on Art

March 29, 2024
Beyond describing what we see in front of us, which good ekphrasis attempts, we use words to do justice to the saturation of color and texture and line that we see with words. We can only try to assess what the eye computes. I find that this is nearly impossible…

The Inherent Bastard

March 29, 2024
Mike Myers as Fat Bastard The word “bastard” has been a saddle pack, an illegitimate child, an easy way to curse without using vulgar language, and much more over the course of its complicated linguistic evolutionary history. Beside all of those definitions, the word is much more meaningful and filled…

William Greaves: An Underrated Auteur

March 29, 2024
William Greaves, an African American filmmaker, and an auteur whose career spanned most of the 20th century, was not mentioned in Jon Lewis’ book American Film: a History. In the book’s second edition, Lewis sheds light on the auteurs of the 1980s, the Movie Brats, as well as a variety…

Four Contemporary Queens of Photography

March 29, 2024
LaToya Ruby Frazier LaToya Ruby Frazier/ Lorna SimpsonContemporary American photographer LaToya Ruby Frazier uses her upbringing in the first Carnegie steel mill town of Braddock, Pennsylvania to fuel a creative force of social change through photographic recording of her surroundings. While many photographers following in the footsteps of the legacy…

The Vision (According an Undergraduate)

March 29, 2024
My company I have yet to LLC Written as a Senior in Ithaca College (BFA 2023) Regarding LinkedIn, I feel more confident than ever that I look good on paper. My connection base has grown and I recently added a professional-looking artsy headshot to both my page and my website.…

A New Constructed Realism in Filmmaking

March 29, 2024
To Patty Zimmerman. She was a radical iconoclast—rest in power, Professor Zimmerman. “I am the Movie Eye. I am the mechanical eye. The machine shows you the world, as only I can see. From now on and forever I am free from human immobility. I am in constant motion… My…

Inclusivity Concerns Regarding the National Museum of the American Indian

March 29, 2024
The NMAI Exterior, Washington, DC The inclusivity boom in recent years observed across corporate and state institutions is a double-edged sword. Though at first glance, it may seem it is a clear sign of progress in American society, the reality is murkier. On one side is that by creating more…

The Case for Andres Serrano: Immersion (Piss Christ) (1987)

March 29, 2024
Andres Serrano is an American photographer and artist known for his controversial images famously consisting of religious symbols, bodily fluids, corpses, and human waste. His most famously inflammatory artwork Immersion (Piss Christ) (1987) generated outrage and critical discourse due to its incorporation of the abject in a religious context. The…

(Not So) Humble Beginnings and Where We Are

March 5, 2024
Foundation My fascination with visual aesthetics dates back to early childhood. As a boy in Bulgaria in the early 2000s, I was drawn to drawing and admired paintings, though I was too scared to make any work. Or even try. This intrigue extended into my teenage years, where graphic design…

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