Mary Rutigliano discussed how her mind changed when Steve Prince came to talk about his work. With this statement, I couldn’t agree more. At first when looking at artwork, I never used to dig deep into the meaning behind the piece. My response would either be “I really like this work” or “This is not my cup of tea.” There was not many times, if any, that I expanded on what the piece was actually meant to do.
Taking this course, The Art of Steve Prince, was a spontaneous decision but I am glad I decided to do so. Through the first couple weeks of class, I already see a difference in the way in which I am able to see art differently through tying it to different areas of life. A specific piece of art done by Steve Prince that comes to mind when I think about the way in which I am able to further analyze his work. When I first saw this artwork, I didn’t even know where to begin when describing it. There was so much existing in the piece and each detail containing its own meaning. In W.E.B Du Bois, the sentence stating “The history of the American Negro is the history of his strife” made this specific piece of Prince’s artwork make more sense. I was able to feel the shift in the drawing from a struggle for freedom and this sort of cluterness describing many of the issues of African American history on the left, to a small sense of relief and sharing of their culture on the right. This artwork also made me think about the Urban Garden done in the kinetic gallery where there was one side that highlighted the negative while the other side highlighted the positive in our society. The quote from W.E.B. Du Bois further helped me to analyze the garden even more so as I thought about the negative side of the garden that shows a history of issues, most of which still exist today. These are things that I would have not thought about so deeply without this course. I just thought about what I would make of this artwork before knowing about Steve Prince, and even a week ago before reading W.E.B. Du Bios; my response would have been completely different. I am looking forward to be able to unpack Steve Prince’s artwork more throughout our readings, class discussions, and hopefully his visit later in the semester.