I was very inspired by Eric García's intentional use of materials in his art. That's something I always try to think about in my work, and it brings me back to Marshall McLuhan: the medium is the message. Perhaps it's my disposition towards intensely detailed work that makes me love the research that goes into those choices. I just think it can add so many layers to a work, and it can also deepen the artist's experience of their own work as well. I was particularly drawn to García's prickly pear ink illustrations; the color and the backstory were both lovely to me. I appreciated his humor in acknowledging that indigenous Mexicans didn't use prickly pears for ink for a very specific reason: the bug that lives on the plant gives a much richer and more colorfast ink.
Another part of his talk that I found engaging and encouraging was the way he talked about the successive phases of his process. (See what I did there?) I liked learning that so many of his works had started out as drawings that he then developed beyond their original form. I'm glad other artists do that, and that there are other people who fall back on drawing as a comfortable medium where they can begin to explore ideas that might take their final form in an entirely different way. I also thought it seemed like a very organic way to interpret Baudrillard's successive phases of the image, and an angle on that subject I hadn't considered before. How does the development of an idea change how it relates to reality? How do the different iterations of an idea (illustration, animation, sculpture) change how we relate and understand the art? Which one is the "real" one? Are they all the same piece of art, parts of a whole, or separate works? I don't have answers to these questions, but I find myself pondering them as I flip through my own sketchbook and look back on all the ideas I've jotted down and compare them to their final, "real" selves.
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