Lecture Blog:

The first lecture that I will be analyzing is that of James McBain, which was over why people seemed to lie. He covered several areas, the main facet that interested me, was the ' saving face' aspect, concluding that people would lie simply to not look like they were wrong or in the wrong. He complimented with a study that gave people a choice of several bars to choose which one was the longest, the choice was obvious, but study placed impersonators to choose an obviously wrong answer, and more often than not, the true subject often changed their answer to match that of the rest of the group, and even when shown the correct answer, had a difficult time admitting that they were in fact wrong. I find this study incredibly, entertaining, you could say, as I feel like I observe these sort of actions throughout many scenarios in my life, especially waiting tables, I have numerous stories, that I would be more than happy to enlighten people with the stupidity and stubbornness of others, but alas, I don't want to type a 10,000 word entry, and I highly doubt you'd want to read it, so I'll do us both the favor.

The second lecture that I attended was Kate Nelson's, the current ceramic exhibitor. Unfortunately, I was only able to stay a brief 15 minutes before I had to go serve the masses spaghetti. Portico began the lecture with an extensive relay of Nelson's impressive resume and credentials, which included the China Summer's Ceramics Program as well as the Texas Women's University for her MFA. Besides seeming slightly nervous, I found Nelson's lecture rather intriguing, most of all her theories and passions of Truisms as well as her figures and expressionist shapes dealing with songs. I enjoyed the concept of converting a static, basic, seemingly functional object into something with an obvious literate purpose. At the point in which I had to leave, she was just reaching her discussion about her transition to funk art and kitschy figurines. My interest in these might have been peaked as we had just covered the emergence of pop and California funk in Contemporary Art, and I enjoyed the often raw and disturbing quality as well as overt message that many of the works contained. Unfortunately, this was the time in which I needed to leave and I was unable to hang around to hear about her dramatic change from funk art to the elegant porcelain figures that she is currently exhibiting, although I was around to hear that Henry Moore, the creator of the 'reclining figures', using a simplistic, flowing, connected form, was a major influence upon her works, and once stated, the influence is rather obvious. I wish I would have been around to hear the connection between her titles and the way they corresponded between her thrown and then closed works in the gallery, as honestly in a first impression, although striking, they were all somewhat similar. This is not to say they that they weren't individually beautiful, elegant, or intriguing.