Farm Lab

I was not sure what to expect when going to farmlab. I knew I would be seeing lots of plants and flowers, but i was not exactly sure that the actual purpose of it was. The first thing I had to do was actually find the place which I had found alittle difficult, but once I found farmlab I was pleasantly surprised. The first thing i noticed was this huge green containers that had a picture of a roaster and H2O on it. It was obivous that these containers held the water that they used to water all the plants. 

The next thing I saw was a car was plants growing out of it which I had never seen before, let alone even thought was possible. My favorite part of these plant holding cars, was the paintings of the side that promoted peace and happiness. I was definatly amazed by the cars, but I was still wondering what farmlab actually was. I was later told that farmlab wasfunded by private institutions. It is used as a research facility for artists and anyone fascinated with going green or living a more healthy and happy life. There is a  “green movement sustainbility center located across an old cornfield between the 110 and 5 freeways.  

I find it amazing that they were able to find space for these plants and greenry in the dense crowded and usually smoggy downtown la. There is also great warehouse space with an adjacent outdoor underpass multi-use area. Farmlabs has several large tanks of potable water, a vegetable nursery, and performance stages.      

There is also “public salons” when guest speakers come and talk about the environment or anything pretaining to a healthy lifestyle. I was unable to see a guest speaker had I had visited, but I would definatly go back there to see a speaker talk about how to make positive changes to help the environment. Next, I made my way out to the strawberry patch area where I saw a couple of people working on the installations. It was interesting to actually see first hand people working on them.

I have always been intrigued with “going green” and trying to preserve nature. Farmlab has only furthured my fascination with nature and I will definatly be visiting there again. 🙂

Alexander McQueen

Alexander McQueen is known for both the emotional power and raw energy of the shows as well as the romantic but determinedly contemporary nature of the collections. Integral to the McQueen culture is the juxtaposition between contrasting elements: fragility and strength, tradition and modernity and fluidity and severity. An openly emotional and even passionate viewpoint is realised with a profound respect and influence for the arts and crafts tradition. Alexander’s collections combine an in depth working knowledge of: bespoke British tailoring, the fine workmanship of the French Haute Couture atelier and the impeccable finish of Italian manufacturing.

In less than 10 years McQueen became one of the most respected fashion designers in the world. In October 1996 he was appointed Chief Designer at the French Haute Couture House Givenchy where he worked until March of 2001.
In December 2000, 51% of Alexander McQueen was acquired by the Gucci Group, where he remains to this day as Creative Director. Collections include womens ready to wear, mens ready to wear, accessories, eyewear and fragrance (Kingdom 2003 and MyQueen 2005). Expansion followed and included the opening of flagship stores in New York, London and Milan. Alexander McQueen collections are now distributed in over 39 countries through 194 wholesale accounts including speciality shops and better department stores.

Donatella Versace

She was born May 2, 1955 in Reggio di Calabria, Italy, Donatella Versace is the younger sister of slain designer Gianni Versace, who made the name famous with Donatella as his muse and inspiration. She followed Gianni at a young age as a knitwear designer and soon helped him launch his ubiquitous label. He awarded her with her own diffusion label, Versus which still produces clothes today.

Originally intent on being in public relations with her brother’s line, Donatella has used that PR knowledge to help keep the Versace name in the news despite some financial hardships after her brother’s death in 1997.        

After a fire sale of his extensive homes and art collection, she used the capital to launch the first Versace couture line and has now branched into luxury hotels after the opening of Palazzo Versace on the Gold Coast of Australia. Plans have been announced for several more Palazzo Versace resorts, including one in Dubai.

Donatella’s success as a fashion designer was pretty much instantaneous, due to the fact that her first line was gifted to her by Gianni. But after his murder, the Versace empire fell upon hard times. It was during the rebuilding process that Donatella showed her other talent – public relations.

Using such celebrity friends as Madonna, Demi Moore, Elton John and others, she began to equate the Versace name with celebrity in the public eye. By doing so, she managed to turn the Versace line back into a force in the fashion industry as she branches out into other pursuits like resorts.

Jamie Isenstein

Jamie Isenstein was born in 1975 in Portland, Oregon, and lives in New York. She earned her BA from Reed College in Portland in 1998 and her MFA from Columbia University in 2004. Her performances, installations, drawings, and sculptures have been the subject of solo exhibitions at Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York (2007); Meyer Riegger Galerie, Karlsruhe and Berlin, Germany (2006); and Guild and Greyshkul, New York (2004). Group exhibitions include those at P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, New York; CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco; and Museum Moderner Kunst, Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna. Reviews of Isenstein’s work have appeared in such publications as theNew York Times, Contemporary, Art in America, and Modern Painters.      

In her exhibitions and projects Jamie Isenstein often absorbs the personas of inanimate objects (sometimes, uncomfortably, for hours at a time), sitting—or standing or crouching—at the mercy of her art. She has transformed herself into a wingback armchair with her legs serving as the chair’s two front legs and her arms as the chair’s arms (the rest of her body hides inside the upholstered chair). In other works she uses herself as a character. For the Performa 05 Biennial she wrote and performed a radio program, Inside Out with Jamie Isenstein, that featured the artist in conversation with her skeleton and a bottle of lotion. The topic of the program: a recent book about plastic surgery’s effect on popular music, using Michael Jackson and Cher as examples. She turns the inside out and recontextualizes the familiar, making us see the world around us in a different light.

In Infinite Invisible Soft-Shoe (2004), accompanied by a ragtime arrangement of the Bee Gee’s “Staying Alive” on a player piano, thick red velvet theater curtains rise and fall in a ghostly dance on an empty stage set. (Isenstein hides behind the curtains, pulling the cords like a puppet master.) The companion video features the artist and a life-size skeleton—both costumed in tuxedo jackets, top hats, and Groucho Marx glasses and holding canes—performing a soft-shoe dance. Isenstein makes us consider our physicality, anthropomorphizing and animating everyday objects and transforming her body into various inanimate objects

Allan Kaprow

Allan Kaprow was born 1927 in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Within a brief and intense early career, Kaprow progressed from an interest in Abstract Expressionism (Jackson Pollock) and many-levelled paintings incorporating collage to assemblage. He enrolled in Hans Hofmann’s painting school (1947-48).     

Through Hofmann he began to develop an expressive, high spirited style of action painting, based on real landscapes and figures, which was to lead, by a number of well-defined and documented steps, to the happenings of a decade later. 1956–1958 he was studying musical composition with the avant-garde composer John Cage at the New School for Social Research in Manhattan.    

In 1957–58 Kaprow began to create environmental works that demanded audience participation (influenced by Cage), and this integration of space, materials, time and people eventually led to the more experimental pieces and the development of his happenings, a term he coined in 1959. Kaprow now teaches in the Visual Art Department of the University of California at San Diego.

James Turrell

James Turrell is one of the world’s leading artists. His forty year exploration of light enables him to make thought-provoking and beautiful contemporary art works which often have an emotional and uplifting effect on viewers.

Born in 1943 in Los Angeles, James Turrell studied astronomy, psychology, mathematics, fine art and art history at Pomona College, Claremont and the University of California.

His background in aircraft construction and flight navigation, together with a rigorous knowledge of optics, eye physiology and perceptual psychology, have each informed his work over the last four decades.     

In 1966, Turrell rented the former Mendota Hotel in Ocean Park, California: sealing the building from the sound and light outside, he experimented with projected light, gradually introducing shafts of moon and sunlight into the spaces. This important period of experimentation and development provided the basis necessary for all subsequent works.

Following his first international solo exhibition aged 33 at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, Turrell has continued to exhibit in major museums internationally.

In 1984 he was awarded the prestigious ‘genius’ award – the Katherine T. and John D. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship; the Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres, France in 1991; the Friedrich Prize, Germany in 1992; an Honorary Doctorate from the Royal College of Art, London in 2003; and membership of the esteemed American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2004.

Hussein Chalayan

The internationally regarded fashion designer, Hussein Chalayan, was born in Nicosia, Cyprus in 1970 and went to London in 1982 when he was 12 years old. The Turkish Cypriot dreamt to be a pilot or an architect in his early life, turned to be a renowned fashion stylish where innovative use of materials, meticulous pattern cutting and progressive attitude to new technology made him an exceptional.

Chalayan was educated both in Cyprus and England. He completed his graduation degree in 1993 from London’s central St Martin’s college of art and design with an exciting presentation of garments that he buried in the earth before to see how they would decompose and the whole collection titled ‘The Tangent Flows’ was later purchased and displayed in luxury designer store in London.   

The design lovely man has got inspiration from a wide range of different disciplines, to illustrate, architecture, philosophy, anthropology etc.

In addition to his own label, Chalayan designed three years for New York knitwear label TSE that based on experiments and even abstractions of existing items like meteorological charts were, in a word, elegant. His clothes are sold in the United Kingdom, France, Italy, the United States, Hong Kong and Japan.

Moreover, Chalayan was appointed as the creative director for German sportswear label Puma in February 2008.

The fashion clothes offered by Chalayan seem to be minimal in look but maximal in thought and sometimes abstractions appear in his collections featured vampires, tombs, constriction and darkness to his themes. As a result, his clothes become innovative, exquisite, technically brilliant and exceptional as well. 

The cutting edge collection presented by Chalayan, shows the continuity between art and fashion – Bleached denim, ragged dresses with scribbled details, sharply tailored jackets and the futuristic, sculpted silhouettes featured in the new range, are more conventional but still beautifully complex.

The eveningwear offered by the passionate fashion designer, are in the form of column dresses in fine matt jersey, decorated with jet beads, gold embroidery and gold chains.

Chalayan’s collection mixes with dynamic shades of black, olive green, poppy red, burnt orange and contrasts with crisp white and a bold floral print.

Having as much art installation and theater as fashion, Chalayan always makes a certain distance from pop-culture as well as fashion trends displayed an uncanny ability to present spot-on collections season after season.

Chalayan has produced remarkably wearable three ultra-feminine collections for the New York-based cashmere company TSE although on one occasion, Chalayan fashioned an entire collection based on the traditional Muslim garb included long knitted dresses with built-in walking sticks, starkly pleated concertina dresses and cone-and-perspex-cube headdresses.

As part of fashion designing, the British designer has manufactured a young, fast and disposable capsule collection for Top Shop in London, a store popular with teenagers and sometimes Chalayan designs costumes for opera and dance performances.

In early 2008, Chalayan designed a series of laser LED dresses in collaboration with luxury label Swaroski showcased in Tokyo.

Ana Mendieta

Born in Havana, Cuba, Ana Mendieta was exiled from her native country in 1961, just before the outbreak of the Cuban Revolution. Much of Mendieta’s work expresses the pain and rupture of cultural displacement, and resonates with visceral metaphors of death, rebirth, and spiritual transformation. A seminal figure in feminist art practice of the 1970s, Mendieta devised an emblematic, at times mythical female iconography.

In 1972 Mendieta began making ritualistic performances and haunting earth works, in which she immersed or inscribed her own body within nature. Blood, fire, water, and other natural elements are essential to her highly personal, often mystical vocabulary. Burial and regeneration are recurrent themes. Mendieta’s ephemeral “earth-body sculptures” and provocative performances were documented through film, video and photography. Whether painting her body with blood, or burning, carving and inscribing female symbols into the landscape, as in her Silueta series, Mendieta’s work is infused with enormous power and poetry. 

Mendieta writes: “I have been carrying on a dialogue between the landscape and the female body (based on my own silhouette)… I am overwhelmed by the feeling of having been cast from the womb (nature). Through my earth/body sculptures I become one with the earth… I become an extension of nature and nature becomes an extension of my body…”

Over a fourteen-year period Mendieta made more than seventy films and videotapes that document her powerful body-based performances and landscape sculptures. A selection of these works has now been made available.

Maya Lin

Maya Lin attended Yale University and received a bachelor of arts degree in architecture in 1981, and a master of architecture from Yale’s School of Architecture in 1986. While she was still an undergraduate, Lin entered a public design competition for the Vietnam Memorial. She won the competition against 1,400 other entries. Lin was only 21 at the time.

The project was attacked from the beginning for several reasons, including the aesthetics of the design and Lin’s heritage. However, Lin did not deviate from her efforts, and oversaw the entire construction process. The cut stone masonry “Wall” was granite and V-shaped with one side pointing to the Lincoln Memorial and the other to the Washington Monument. It was dedicated in 1982, and has become one of the most visited pubic memorials in the United States.

Lin has created other works, including the Women’s Table at Yale University (1993), and the Civil Rights Memorial at the Southern Poverty Law Center, Montgomery, Alabama (1988-1993). Lin is strongly concerned about the environment. She incorporates recycled, living, and other natural materials in her work.          

Maya Lin has served on the Board of Energy Foundation as well as on the National Advisory Board to the Presidio Council in San Francisco. She also has served on The Southern Poverty Law Center’s Teaching Tolerance project, the Kennedy Museum of Art at Ohio University, and Studio in a School in New York City, New York.

Andy Goldsworthy

Andy Goldsworthy was born in Cheshire in 1956 and was brought up in Yorkshire. He studied at Bradford College(1974-75) and Preston Polytech (1975-78).

After leaving college Goldsworthy lived in Yorkshire, Lancashire and Cumbria. He moved over the border to Langholm, Dumfriesshire, in 1985 and to Penpont one year later. This gradual drift northwards was due to a way of life over which he did not have complete control. However, contributing factors were opportunities and desires to work in these areas and reasons of economy.

Throughout his career most of Goldsworthy’s work has been made in the open air, in places as diverse as the Yorkshire Dales, the Lake District, Grize Fiord in the Northern Territories of Canada, the North Pole, Japan, the Australian outback, St Louis, Missouri and Dumfriesshire. The materials he uses are those to hand in the remote locations he visits: twigs, leaves, stones, snow and ice, reeds and thorns. Most works are ephemeral but demonstrate, in their short life, Goldsworthy’s extraordinary sense of play and of place. The works are recorded as photographs. Book publication is an important aspect of Andy Goldsworthy’s work: showing all aspects of the production of a given work, each publication is a work of art in its own right.

Some recent sculpture has a more permanent nature, being made in stone and placed in locations far from its point of origin, as for example Herd of Arches 1994. The series of chalk arches made at Sculpture at Goodwood in 1995 are semi-permanent, given the fragility of the material, and are now sited indoors at Goldsworthy’s studio in Dumfriesshire, to extend their life.