Week 7 — Art Idea Essay — The Art of Place
Individuality, personality, and physical characteristics are largely formed based on place of origin. Your racial background doesn’t have all to do with where you were born, but a portion of the time it could. Your childhood is spent, in most cases, in a general area. This gives you the basic views, lingo, and culture of those around you. For example, someone who grew up in New York City has many contrasting factors from someone who grew up in a small town in California. Though place has many contributions to the development of each individual, it isn’t limiting. Throughout life people may choose to take different paths than those around them. This then ties to the saying “ Don’t forget where you come from” or “Don’t forget your roots”.
Many artists like to encompass the feeling of place in what they create. Originally born in the Netherlands, artist Wijnanda Deroo moved to New York to pursue her photography career. Her work consists of various places around the world, each capturing different cultures and architecture. One of her works include a trip to Mexico, where she portrayed the livelihood and colorful atmosphere. Another showed her experience in Amsterdam, the architecture contrasting from Mexico’s. Each of her photos allow you to feel the energy of the place visited. Much like capturing place through photos, many artists like to capture them through physical art, such as painting and drawing. Claude Monet, a French artist from the 1900s, practiced an imaginative version of this. He broke away from traditional landscape painting and began making it feel more whimsical. He achieved this theme through long brush strokes and slightly blending the objects together. Below is one of his famous paintings, “Pathway in Monet’s Garden at Giverny”, which is pretty self explanatory as far as the name goes. The pathway is obviously interpreted but the colors seem to blend into each other, and the garden has a fantasy-like touch to it. Place can very much be altered to fit the desires of who’s portraying it.
So far, we’ve discussed place in real and fantasy worlds, whether it be a land in a video game or a page on social media that bring people with the same interests together. Though not many know of it, there’s another way to interpret place through a rare brain malfunction, it’s called Developmental Topographical Disorder. I just recently discovered the name of it after months of research to find what was wrong with my sense of place. What happens is that every place you go, your brain forms 2–4 different cognitive maps, therefore it can switch through them whenever it wants, unless you learn how to control or minimize it. I have 3 different ways I see my own home and I’ve learned how to control it and switch through the maps manually, though it takes a lot of concentration. This malfunction can make your sense of place (even if you’re really familiar with it) feel confusing and sometimes uncomfortable. I’ve learned to remember my surroundings in each map as much as I can to prevent that lost feeling, though there are still times it messes with me. I’ve come to terms with my disorder and I feel that it has allowed me to see places in a unique way.
Art is a great way to portray and feel place, whether it’s a real location or a made up world. It exists and contributes to our everyday lives, giving us many different options to interpret where we are and where we want to be. I think America will be similar in the years soon to come, but by 2050, there will be more obvious changes. Perhaps architecture may become more intricate or our neighborhoods will have renovations. Personally, I’m residing in my hometown, Marysville. It’s my plan to move back to Long Beach next semester because of the contrast it has to my town, I’ve always been more drawn to city life. I hope to travel after graduation and who knows where I’ll end up living. Only the future could tell.
