Week 5 Discussion

This week’s readings and videos are based on metaphors and collages. A metaphor is basically
two things that are not similar at all and is compared to one another. Instead of being
compared to as different, they are mostly be associated with each other. We use metaphors
just about every day when talking about something or someone. Metaphors are found in
dramas and plays like Shakespeare, lyrics, movies, and more. It was interesting to read about
metaphors and psychology. Symbolic modeling helps with individuals work through their
emotions, traumas, and personal dilemmas. I also found it interesting that David Grove
discovered that clients would describe their troubling emotions and traumatic experiences by
speaking in metaphors as it is much harder to speak directly about these experiences possibly in
a healthy way that the individual possibly can. Who knew metaphors could be so important?

The development of metaphors & children was interested as well. Children can development
the understanding of a metaphor with more life experience. Children start to produce
metaphors at such a young age, mostly a simple noun-noun substitution. Through child’s play,
younger children can manipulate the objects around them as well as the ideas about those
objects. When reading this chapter, I thought it was interesting that the girl was covering her
doll up with flowers and plants and replied to her parent, “It’s time for my doll’s nap in the
flowerbed!” The child understood the kenning of the term flowerbed as literal. Metaphors can
also gold double function terms like “hot” and cold” and “bitter” and “sweet”.

These metaphors remind me of the Katy Perry song “Hot and Cold” and the Sour Patch
commercials with the slogan, “First they’re sour. Then they’re sweet”.

The videos about the collage and assemblage artists all had some things in common: collectors
and recyclers. They each collect material we use and see each day that has its own meaning and
purpose, adds it to another pieces and creates a totally different meaning. As artists, we all try
our best to recycle things and find a new use for something we just can’t find ourselves to
throw away. I’m like this in the art room but at my home, it’s the complete opposite. I will
discard things in a heartbeat. Other than the artist’s we watched videos about, there are plenty
more artists that construct pieces with recyclables like Alejandro Duran, Veronika Richterova,
and Hiroshi Fuji. They all take from the environment – trash from the ocean, forest, streets, and
more to construct larger works of art to bring awareness about plastic pollution.

I am familiar with Dustin Yellin’s work. I think his work is brilliant. I like how he refers to the
work “Garden of Earthly Delights” as work that was a head of it’s time. That is something I
believe of about his own work. The depth and the layers of each piece (the meaning of) is mind
boggling. The longer you look at his work, the more you discover.

Lastly, while I was reading about metaphors, it made me recollect on a bit I saw from The Late
Late Show called Emoji News. Audience members try and guess the story line. In my opinion,
this relates to metaphors. We use these symbols that have meaning and put them together to
create a totally different story line. A shared a clip from the night show.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjkQvJd88iQ