Final Thoughts

Sorry it's late Tony, these days just seem to slip by unnoticed, and then you look up and realize it's already Friday. In most cases, that would be a good thing, but when I've left behind unfinished work and have now only mere hours until my next final, the minutes I no longer have are the ones I need the most...

It is difficult to sum up an entire semester in a few short paragraphs. This is made all the more challenging when one considers how uniquely exploratory this semester has been. A class whose goal is to explore a world as rich as American folk, and seeks to understand the complex set of interrelated events, artists, songs, chord progressions, styles, lives and feelings which comprise such a realm is certainly one in which a very powerful community will form, with music at its core.

When you add on the facts that we not only explored the music intellectually, but physically and emotionally by singing every week, an even deeper connection begins to emerge. Further still, weekly art pieces based of these musical artworks seeks to bridge the musical and visual, creating some newer way of experiencing both. Truly then, we have done something not merely amusing, but deeply profound. I can say, without doubt, that I have learned an invaluable amount about American folk. Artists I never knew existed have now entered into my lexicon and become key players in the musicality of my life. Stories I couldn't tell for lack of wisdom, knowledge or ability, have now shaped the way I look not only at music, but at people, and myself. Discovering in this class how much I enjoy singing has inspired me to audition for choir next semester. Watching Tony's, Gigi's and Max's fingers dance beauteous fury and delicate grace has rekindled my desire to play styles of music I once shied away from.

Here then, am I, not as I once was, but as a more grown yet still growing, maturely childish, knowledgeably curious and dangerously explorative creator of ideas and worlds. And I think we have all become creators of ideas and worlds. Or, perhaps we always were, but there requires a catalyst for such potential to be released. Through VS 185X: Songs and Places, I think the process of reemergence has begun, and I believe the realms of artistic expression, both musically and visually, hold all of the answers. It is simply a matter of searching for them.

Week 10 - Gospel

The work for this week was actually done over the summer in a small sketchbook while I was traveling through the south of France. I felt a strong connection to those memories while listening to the gospel music because many of them were done while in or looking at large, magnificent Gothic cathedrals or cathedral cities. Here are some selected drawings.

Week 11/12 - Blues

The blues is sort of like the emperor of modern music. It is the seeds of life which flourish into everything that has come since. It is also beautifully spontaneous, emotional and without form or guidance.  I believe the blues is not something so clearly defined, because it is based in the infinite sorrow of the volksgeist of the 20th century man. Born from the souls of black folks, it somehow grew into something so much greater than the sum of its parts, I think because each of these parts alone is so strong than together, they form something wholly uncontrollable.

I did not think nor did I try anything for these two pieces. I simply put on the blues and created them.  While not blatantly blue-ish or saddening, they are experimentations in the spontaneity and explosive quality that the blues has the potential for.

Week 9 - Woody Guthrie

For this week, I tried to do something very different from everything I have done up to this point. I am struck by the basic 'power' Woody Guthrie has as a musician and a man. I felt he transcends over the rest of us at a very fundamental level.  So, I tried to create two inverted mirror images, one representing "The Enlightened Man" Woody and others who have that certain je-ne-sais-quoi which makes them stand out as a collective genius. The other, entitled "The Man I Am", has the same desire, hopes, and willingness, but results in an inversion of what an enlightened man (or woman for that matter) has.

 

Week 8 - Leadbelly

Leadbelly is such a complex character, and this week I became very frustrated with a piece I had wanted to work on. So, I decided to return to the forms I worked with last week for MJH, but drew it win pencil instead of colored pencil. The two 'arms' extending from the orb are representational of a perceived influence upon Leadbelly by his more innocent, maternal qualities so hus more violent, masculine ones. The strings follow the course of his life and change based upon what seems to be dominant in his life along the timeline.

week 7 - John Hurt continued

This was an experiment with colored pencil, and an attempt to express the complexity of the overlap of varying elements in John Hurt's life.

Week 6 - MJH Among Others

I felt a bit overloaded my the amount of music this week.  But I mean that in a good way.  There is such a plethora of amazing MJH music, and it all began to swirl around in my ears, forming something I wasn't quite sure what it could be. So I just kept listening, and began to look for inspiration outside as well as inside the class.  Incredibly inspired by other artists, especially some from our class, I started experimenting with a relatively unfamiliar medium: digital.

I began on illustrator, using every tool which looked interesting until I came up with a very abstract formation of light and energy.  From there, I do what I always do (and I mean always) when I am entering a critical stage in my artwork.  I put on my headphones, turned up the volume and put on Dark Side of the Moon.  With 48 minutes to go before my work would be done (it always happens to work out just about right). The similarity with my images and the DSotM cover is coincidence, although I do think there is some power in the idea of looking to the cosmos. I began experimenting further with effects, quickly realizing I was finished with adding new forms.  One of the most difficult things for a visual artist, at least for me, is to know when to stop.  It is a subtle art in of itself, being able to step back and say "maybe it isn'y perfect, but...maybe it is".

From there, I moved the image into photoshop and had an epiphany just as "Us and Them" began to play.  This image takes on a completely different form with one simple change: the background color. So from there it was only a matter of time before I came upon the posturize tool, and as "Any Color You Like" filled my eardrums, one image became two, and two became 8. 8 forms of the same form.

And, when I had finished, a short listen to Mississippi John Hurt's "My Creole Belle" summed up the whole experience pretty well. 

"When the stars do shine

I'll call her mine

My darlin' baby

My Creole belle"

Week 5 - Barbara Allen

This song is very terrifying.  The lone female voice, unaccompanied by any instrumentation creates a deep lamentable mood which is full of such a beautiful sorrow.  It suggests to me a sense of longing, a desire for more, for life.  A desire for a life now waning, falling away beneath the aether.

I imagine a dying figure, and hands reaching out towards this figure, extending but not far enough, searching but not enough to find their target, the lone dying figure.  The figure materialized through a heartbeat, both comforted and strangled by a surrounding push and pull of hands. The hands are but mere shades, gestures of their true forms, unable to grasp and hold on to what is dying, and will die.

Week 4 - Banks of the Ohio

"Banks of the Ohio" is a song which, to me, represents a sad truth about the power of emotion.  Love, they say, is the most beautiful and powerful emotion of them all.  I also believe it can be the most sad and evil. There is such a strong sense with love, that all else seems unnecessary.  And just as love can bring joy and tranquility, it can also bring pain and fear unlike anything else.  "Banks of the Ohio" shows just that. How quickly a man can turn from jubilant hope to bitter, violent defeat all in the name of love. Not just 'love', but the same love which he possesses from the first line turns this man from good to evil.  

My drawing is a response not to the events described in the song, but those which would have to follow. For the song is about Willie and the murder he commits, not about the aftermath.  What struck me most was the fact that this young girl is dead, and what that means going forward.  What must the sheriff do now, once she has been identified?  How he is tasked with the burden of informing her family, and how they are burdened so much more, unfathomably so, by his words.  This emotion struck me very firmly, and I drew a semi-gestural image of a woman who, standing in her home, has just learned her daughter is dead.

Week 3 - O Mary Don't You Weep

The first image that came to my mind was of a woman's face, and a young boy's hand softly wiping away a tear from her eye.  I also felt inclined to attempt a new style of visual response.  I made a wireframe model of a a woman's face and a gestural line representing the hand.  It was all connected by smaller pieces of wrapped wire.  While the final result did not possess the level of detail or craft I wished, I believe it was a good first attempt at this type of 3D representation.

The piece is not necessarily a response to any particular line or thought from the song, but rather the idea of caressing away someone's sadness.  I took the song not to be a piece about sorrow, whether it be an embracement or acceptance, but rather as a song intended to make someone feel better.  This is what I tried to express in the piece, which I feel is still unfinished.

Week 2 - Down In The Valley

"Down in the Valley" follows a flowy 3/4 pattern, and is arranged about two major chords, F and C.  The love ballad's rhythmic, tantric melody fills my ears with the same sense of blowing wind described in the lyrics.  The line "hang your head over" for some reason instills in me a sorrowful image of loneliness and even death. I think the imagery stems from the idea of both the gallows (to which I do not believe the lines refers) and also the sense of disappointment or sadness involved in the heart of a woman with a low-hanging head.  

The allusions to nature ("Roses love sunshine, violets love dew") and religious imagery ("Angels in Heaven") create a strong poetic element and further strengthen the beauteous nature of love. this is continued throughout the song. I am particularly fascinated by the lines "If you don't love me, love whom you please/Throw your arms round me, give my heart ease".  At first listen, it seemed to me a contradiction of logic - to let free the heart of a loved one, and then asking her to embrace to again embrace the singer.  This is perhaps an allusion to the conflicted nature of love, and suggests that a warm embrace, even while the romance has gone elsewhere, is still a powerful remedy for the stresses of love. 

Both the stanza about Birmingham jail and regarding the castle to me represent the same metaphorical or literal structure.  While perhaps a literal reference to being imprisoned, I think the jail is also a representation of a trapped heart, one forever in love with a woman.  The castle is this same environment, but in a world where the woman herself, the object of his love, "builds" him a castle to rest his heart in. Similar to the idea of the warm embrace, it is perhaps a symbol of easing the pain of love, so that she herself builds this castle, and lets herself still have some part of his life (such as the embrace) as she goes by to another love.  The Valley to me is also a metaphorical environment for his trapped heart.  He is surrounded on both sides by rising cliffs, encircling him and towering over. This is symbolic of being trapped in a jail as well as being wrapped in a loved ones arms.

I used a bamboo reed pen with black dip ink on this drawing. I wanted to use the dip pen because I like the unpredictability and rawness of the line produced; it allows for more emotion and less thought to come through in a drawing.  At the forefront of the drawing is a lone mane, standing on the roof of his castle, plucking away a tune to his lost love, as she sails away on the river along the valley floor. 

Week 1 - You Are My Sunshine

Norman Blake’s version of “You Are My Sunshine” is a nice and light version of the tune. By that I mean it is not so minimalist such that it reflects the story of only a lone guitarist, but the additional banjo and even perhaps mandolin add a subtle layer of depth which keeps the quality of the tune from being overpowered by superfluous instrumentals.  The ability for a song to convey its message and emotional quality with minimal production is something I respect greatly.  Blake’s version embraces the art of efficiency, and the beauty of simplicity.  It has the rolling, bumblin’ and tumblin’ quality that makes much folk music so easy to listen to. I think this version was chosen because it is very pretty, and does not fall victim to the childish quality which so often take prey of Jimmie Davis’ classic.  

Blake also manipulates the lyrics of the song, beginning with one of its saddest stanzas before going into the chorus. Many versions of the song switch around the stanzas, and by starting with such a sad lyric, he immediately sets the mood of the song, foregoing any mystery to whether it had a "happy" ending or not. I think this sets the tone very well, because while the music seems cheery, “You Are My Sunshine” is actually a terribly sad ballad.  I like this juxtaposition between melody and lyric, and the added layer of depth to the narrative being told.  It is as if the narrator is jubilant to sing of his lost love, while being unable to escape the sad tale he tells.  

In my first attempt at painting, I tried to abstract the progress of happy thoughts and memories towards the sorrowful result of the narrative by moving from warmer colors to more cool ones.  The sky is a light purple wash of slanted lines and the sunset is a deep red, symbolizing the lack of “shine” left by the final verse. The stars were supposed to trace the sheet music of the song.  I used watercolor on non-watercolor paper, another allusion to the dueling nature of the song’s melody and narrative.  However, this was problematic in execution, and ended up looking very chaotic.  I then decided to repeat the scene on watercolor paper, and place the two images side-by-side.  I attempted to trace elements of the narrative and musical quality through the image, using mostly warm but also cool colors to represent the conflicting nature of the song’s music. I wanted the image to reflect the initial feeling of listening to the song, wherein the heart feels warmed by the devotion of love and the light tune, but elements of sadness persist throughout. Again, the “stars” a representative of the musical notation.

France 2011

Here is some artwork from a recent trip I took to France.  It was a two-week adventure through the south of France, along with my design professor Chip Sullivan and some classmates. Wine, cheese, friends and art. Yes, it was as awesome as it sounds.

Why I joined VS 185X

I am a Berkeley student, entering my junior year and I am very interested in VS 185x: Songs and Places.

My name is James Piacentini, I was born in Great Neck, which is a Long Island suburb on the north shore close to Queens.  I moved to Southern California when I was 5, and grew up in Santa Monica. I am majoring in Architecture with a minor in History of the Built Environment. 

I have been playing acoustic and electric guitar for 10 years, and begun to study the piano this summer, and I have a basic understanding of music theory.  I spent much of my life taking art classes, have taken ED 11A, and spent two weeks this summer in France drawing and painting.

I am fascinated by the topic of the class - Songs and Places - because the relationship between a culture and its music to me is one of the most intricate as well as one of the truest and most powerful elements of understanding a society and a place.  Music is one of the few things that has existed in every modern human society going back over 35,000 years ago.  To me, that is just amazing. Because music is biologically engrained in the human psyche, and our brains are naturally attuned to find melody and rhythm, music is such an integral part of identity, just as is one's physical environment.  I like the topic of the class because it combines all the social and emotional elements of music with a more scientific approach to the way culture and environment affect and are affected by music.

Also, I love to draw, paint and write, and during my experience, music always accentuates and improves the visualization process.  To be able to really explore that in depth, and to share my work and learn from others is a such a rewarding experience.