Artist Interview With Eric Fox

Kyla Gayle

Prof. Rose

HUN 195 Art in New York

Artist Interview with Eric Fox

                Eric Fox is a High School teacher and currently teaches at Queen High School for Teaching. He was my art teacher and helped me create my portfolio while I was in High School, and is an artist I look up to. I am proud to say that for my internship I will his Teachers assistant starting in January. I interviewed him because I knew him on a teacher student level but not really on an artist to artist level.

1.       How did you get started ?

My father was an artist and still does free lance work today. I look up to my father and I think his love for art was passed down to me. He took me to the MET and other museums as a child, and I just loved it and decided to go to school for it.

2.       Why did you become a high school art teacher instead of a Professor at a college ?

Well in have the qualifications to become Professor but I would rather teach High School, even though they can be immature at times, it’s nice to see them grow into young adults and its even nicer to see their art develop.

3.      How do you feel about being an art teacher in New York, knowing that they get fired first if the school is running low in funds?

Well to be honest I’m not worried about my job because this school is pretty new, but since 2008 more of our students have been accepted in to art school with scholarship and since this is a small school once the other students hear about that they want to create a portfolio. I was able to set up a senior art class for the seniors who want to take an extra art class or for the juniors who want to create a portfolio. So to answer your question our art program is growing and I’m not worried about my job.

4.      Who is your favorite artists and why ?

My favorite artist is Chuck Close, because I love his style and the way he makes portraits modern.

5.      Do you continue to go to art classes ?

Yes, I continue to take classes to work on my skills. My favorite class to take is life drawing because I can’t do much with that teaching high school.

David Smith: Cubes and Anarchy

David Smith (1906-1965) was an American sculptor. Cubes and Anarchy is a new exhibition held at the Whitney museum until January 8, 2012. Smith uses steel geometric shapes to sculpt with. Smith's Cubi and Zig sculptures from the 60's were not seen from him because he was considered a Surrealist and Expressionist. Cubes and Anarchy reveals the artists late works. The show includes over 60 sculptures, drawings, and paintings, and well as rarely seen sketchbooks and photographs. My favorite piece of the show was Cubi I, It makes me want to climb it. I love how it looks unstable as if its about to topple over and how the small circle at the bottom is holding the whole thing up. His pieces remind of African art in a way because it is so geometric. I also like how his pieces with out color such as the Cubi I still have some type of color to it, maybe it’s the way the lights hit it but they are not just the silver steel color, they have different tones of gray as well. I can appreciate why this exhibition is called Cubes and Anarchy especially because of this piece. This piece obviously has cubes but the "anarchy" of the piece is that the cubes aren’t stable it makes you feel as if they could fall in any minute. Another way to look at the "anarchy" of the work is that the circle is holding up 6 cubes that vary in sizes, which makes no sense. 

Work Cited

http://whitney.org/Exhibitions/DavidSmith

  

Non-Art Resourse (Still Life)

Definition of a Figure

Art Resource ( African Mask)

Fantastic Content

United Nations Gallery

This is a photo of the favella project that I saw at the United Nations trip, this project was basically trying to bring attention to Brazil so that people could see how they live and help them. They paid the the youth to paint the favella's so that they could give back. I thought that this was kind of a contradiction because they were bringing beauty to a "ugly" place.