Response to "Collected Observations"

When I first toured the art gallery I didn't know what to think of the pieces. I thought they didn't even seem like art. Most of them looked like random pictures drawn from looking at people. They were particularly interesting to me because most of them didn't look like a piece of art had been created by an adult. One piece in particular was very interesting; I could not believe was in the gallery was a piece that looked like a giant spilled mess of brown water colors. If you looked closely at this you could see what looked to be lips in the spilled part. I went over and looked at the booklet with the artists’ biographies and was astonished at some of the prices for some of these pieces. I could not believe the asking prices for some of these “pieces of art.” Personally, I would rather put up something which was at least nice to look at. I personally didn’t like any of the work on display, but this is of personal preference, someone else might think some of the pieces are beautiful. Even though I thought these pieces of art were way over-valued in my eyes I can see why the prices may be so high. The artist who made the work obviously put a price tag on the work which is indicative of what they believed they should receive for their work. I can see why they may set the price high, because if and when they sell it, they may never see it again. My favorite piece in the exhibit was “Mute” by Dan Kempner. I felt like with all the different televisions he really looked at something hardly anyone ever thinks about, everyday occurrences. These occurrences included people cheering at a Ravens game, people in an airplane, and people studying in class. I thought this was very interesting, just looking at things people do on an everyday basis that we don’t take the time to look at. The last observation which I thought was interesting was the artwork on the pillars. I didn’t think this was artwork at all, but instead just a bunch of ramblings on the wall. None of it made any sense and I have no idea what the artist was trying to get me to understand about their work. I think this was a very interesting experience because the gallery was nothing like I expected and you really had to think about each piece to get any sort of meaning out of a piece.