Her talk was appropriately entitled "Mouth as Muse," and it featured drawings from different stages of her artistic life. From one slide to the next, you could visibly observe how her skills and style were developing, and you could see that each sketch or piece from her past was another step toward the enormous project that she has now completed, Oral Fixations. She established that the great overlying theme in all of her work is an exploration of "the pleasures and discomforts of being in a human body." I thought, how interesting...to think of a person as this elusive being that's sort of stuck in a costume that they can't take off, a costume that fits them pretty well but that has a few imperfections, a few elements that keep it from being 100% comfortable all of the time. She went on to focus on just the mouth, saying that it initially piqued her interest because it's a body part that is "constantly exposed, but it's also very private and secretive," which is really an amazing thing to think about. Seriously. Try to think of another body part that is characterized by such paradoxical qualities. Paradoxical...aha! That was the first light bulb that clicked on in my brain during the talk. Her artwork is both repulsive and alluring, erotic and lifeless, fantastic and boring...and she made it so because these are all paradoxical qualities that can be attributed to the human mouth.
Listening to her talk about her own fascination with the human mouth, which evidently began for her at a very early age, made me think about my mouth differently. (What does that even mean? Who thinks about their mouth? It's just this thing on your face that you use to talk and eat and sometimes breathe...oh and kiss...and sing...and taste...ooh, and gasp...and sigh...and emote...and experience almost every beautiful sensation you can think of...and...oh...) Yeah. Suddenly, the mouth was beautiful. (Julia Randall would describe this as a "Haha...huh?" moment!) As a singer, I do have a meaningful relationship with my mouth, and yet I had never realized what a beautiful thing it is just to have a mouth. Julia Randall presented a unique perspective when she said, "If the eyes are the windows to the soul, the mouth is the threshold of the id." Like the title of the exhibit, this is another reference to Freudian psychology, the "id" being Freud's word for the part of a personality which contains a human's basic, instinctual drives. This assertion, in a sense, claims that the mouth is capable of expressing things that are even deeper than what we might find in the soul, that the mouth is the window to our very nature as human beings. Already Julia Randall had blown my mind, and I was hooked on this presentation.
Beyond giving her audience fantastic insights into the human mouth, Ms. Randall also discussed her philosophies about art in general. I thought it was interesting that she discovered her obsession with mouths, tongues in particular, by doodling. I'm not an artist, so I had never thought about this before, but I suppose it makes sense that a doodle, the thing that you instinctively draw when you're not thinking about it, would be an indication of what your hand is meant to do. She talked about how difficult it was for her to learn how to create hyperrealistic drawings, since this kind of art requires intense precision and she is a "gestural drawer by nature," and as she went into more detail with this sort of self-evaluation, she said something that really inspired me: "Sometimes, art calls for a certain technique, and that technique requires the artist to physically do something that is very unlike them. You can't always do what feels good!" Lightbulb #2! I realized that I could apply this idea directly to music. An artist must, on occasion, compromise his or her natural flair in order to serve a specific purpose. For instance, someone who specializes in realism would have to alter that style if he or she wanted their work to evoke a feeling of fantasy or possess caricature-like qualities. Likewise, in realizing a piece of music, a musician must find a balance between communicating the composer's exact intentions and bringing originality to the work. An atheistic singer performing the lyrics "Gloria in excelsis deo" must acknowledge that the piece is about God. A professional fiddler who loves country and folk music must tap into a different part of his or her brain in order to properly perform a classical string quartet. This is something to ponder: How do we differentiate between truly creating art and just simply following instructions? And where do we draw the line between a spin-off of an artistic technique and an amateur's failed attempt at employing skill? Which brings us to the age-old question of technical skill and creativity: which of the two is more important? I think that anyone seeking the answers to these questions could learn a lot from Julia Randall.
Randall also included the video portion of Oral Fixations as part of her presentation: a 3-minute montage of bubble gum blowing and popping accompanied by disturbingly loud mouth-breathing sound effects, which she had had playing on a loop for the opening of the exhibit. She explained that she likes to enhance her audiences' experiences by incorporating different types of media, including sound, lights, and other time-sensitive art forms. Light bulb #3! As a musician, I am accustomed to my art being driven by time. Any piece of music that I perform lasts for exactly the duration of the performance, after which it ceases to exist. So shouldn't I try to incorporate other forms of media, some visual art forms, to enhance my audiences' experiences? I began to understand the value of visuals in music performance, whether it be in the form of choreography, formations, colors, or movements: visual appeal adds a layer of durability to time-sensitive art, in the same way that music and video add a sense of presence to visual art.
It was enlightening to hear Ms. Randall's views on these topics, considering she seems to have successfully achieved balance as an artist, in many ways. As she mentioned, her work is a balance between shocking and commonplace, depending on the audience at a given time. Her style is a balance between personal and relatable; she puts a lot of herself into her work, but she uses subtleties that make it so that everyone can understand and perform their own analysis of her work. And she herself strives for a balance between getting her own message across and letting her audiences simply have individualized organic reactions to the art. I see even more now that art is paradoxical, and I plan to find ways of incorporating this idea into anything I create in the future. I left Julia Randall's talk with an increased appreciation for art and a new outlook on my own artistry.
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