Phyllis Chen

Last Thursday I was able to attend Phyllis Chen’s piano concert. I have been to many concert recitals like this before but I thought this one was very different compared to the others. Phyllis Chen did not just switch from one piano to another. She switched from a grand piano, one that we see every day, to a toy piano. I had never seen a toy piano until the concert and I was amazed with how different the toy piano is compared to a regular piano. The toy piano has a lighter tone and no deep noise to it at all. The regular piano has a deeper tone and more seriousness to it. I thought the whole feeling to Phyllis Chen’s concert was exciting for the most part. She introduced some new elements to the piano compared to the regular sounds that we usually hear.

The first song Phyllis played was very fast pace and loud. She shocked the audience right away as she played the toy piano so quickly and loudly. She really showed the power of the piano right away. I also liked the different ranges that she was showing on the toy piano. It could go from high to low but still maintained its toy-like ways. In her next performance she played the regular piano. If she started off with the regular piano, then I would have thought of her performance as something that I had seen before. It would have been nothing new. Since Phyllis started off with the toy piano, she showed her unique style right away.

In her second performance, Phyllis played with mixing bowls and the piano. I don’t know how she came up with the idea of playing both the bowls and the piano but I thought it was really different. I didn’t really understand why she chose to do that but I thought it was entertaining. The bowls gave off a serious tone and when she played the toy piano with the bowls, the tone lightened. In her second song, the bowls sounded like a church bell that was calling for the ceremony to begin and the piano gave off the sound of feet or steps. I thought it was really cool with how she incorporated both the bowls and toy piano to work together to make great music.

My favorite performance was the piece where Phyllis played the toy piano and a beat from the computer. The song was fast paced and sounded electronic and fun. She played the piano in tune with the computer. Another piece that I liked was a piece that she played from another pianist. She held a competition a couple of years ago and a student showed the power of the toy piano in this piece. The song originally started off slow but then it escalated into a much deeper and more powerful sound. It ranged from slow to fast paces and from loud to quiet sounds. I was amazed with how much a toy piano could actually do.

I thought Phyllis Chen’s overall performance was an exciting one. She really shows true talent on both the regular piano and the toy piano. I would definitely go to another one of her performances.

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A State of Mind

This week I attended the Friday Night Film series for the first time. I thought it would be a fun experience going with my friends and watching a movie that I had never heard of before. The movie I watched was A State of Mind. This was a documentary about two young gymnasts who were preparing for the Korean Mass Games. The movie was different than what I expected but I did enjoy parts of it.
I had never heard of the Korean Mass Games before this documentary but after watching it, I realized the Korean Mass Games relate to the Olympic pre show before the actual games started. The documentary was based around communism and the training of the gymnasts. The main two girls of the documentary were two young gymnasts who were the best gymnasts in training. The first gymnast, Song Yun Kim, talked about how she takes great pride in training hard in order to perform for the General. Training for these games take up to a year and sometimes even longer. The second gymnast, Hyon Sun Pak, is younger than Song Yun Kim and she helps train the other gymnasts.
As I watched the documentary I was interested in how the documentary was focused. There were two main focuses: Communism and gymnastics. The Koreans who were interviewed in the documentary were against America’s involvement in Iraq and they all stated how they wish the U.S. would stay out of their way. They take great pride in their General and in communism. It is amazing how we, Americans, think our country is the greatest and take pride in all of our rights and freedoms yet the Koreans take pride in their communist ways. They prefer their ways of living to ours. I never considered the thoughts of the other people who would think of the American involvement in their political affairs as a bad thing.
When the documentary focused on the actual training for the gymnastics routines, I was amazed with how different their version of gymnastics is to the U.S. version. They didn’t do anything dealing with vaults or balance beams, but they focused more on the dance version of gymnastics. When they show the mass games, I was amazed with how all the hard work they put into training paid off. Each costume and color symbolized something dealing with the history of Korea. They used objects and dance moves to show off the beauty of gymnastics. I loved the documentary and the artistry shown in it. It was a great documentary and I would definitely watch it again.

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Joselyn Art Museum

This weekend I was lucky enough to go back home for the weekend and visit the Joselyn Art Museum. I love going to this museum because all throughout Senior year I was able to teach art classes there after school. Visiting the Joselyn Art Museum this time was the first time that I was able to actually walk around and enjoy the scenery.

The most interesting piece that I saw when I was walking around was "The Eye" by Cassandra J. O' Hollaran. This particular artist was my art teacher. I was very shocked to see her art piece because I saw her make it throughout my Sophomore year of high school. I never asked what the meaning was behind the art piece, but the explanation next to it gave the meaning to all of her work.

"The Eye" as she calls it represents the eyes of the lonely. When you look closely at the picture you can see the reflection through a mirror. The eye looked like the eye of a girl and the reflection showed only herself in the mirror. Clearly she looked sad because the eye showed tears but I wasn't really sure what Cassandra was truly trying to show the people. I'm not sure if she was trying to portray every little girl who cries or if it's just one person in particular but I thought of it as representing girls with low self asteem issues. Since the girl was looking at herself in the mirror through the reflection, it looked as if she was maybe criticizing herself. Unfortunately, I was unable to take a picture for my blog since there are no pictures allowed at the museum, but I think Cassandra’s piece is truly amazing. I feel that even though the title of the painting is just called “The Eye” , it has a lot of meaning behind it. When you first look at the picture, the only thing you see is the eye. The more you look at it you see the reflection. Then it’s almost as if you feel what the character in the painting is feeling. The painting of the eye itself was really cool. It looked like a realistic eye, made out of acrylics. I think Cassandra’s style in art is pretty cool since it is like no other piece I have ever seen by her. I also think “The Eye” is different from her many other pieces. She usually just paints pictures of her family members or other fun themes but this one takes a serious tone. There is almost no sense of humor in it like she usually has.
All in all I would say her art piece was truly unique. Cassandra captures more than just one main object but she captures two main subjects through one. You have to look at the first object, the eye, to see the second object, the girl in the mirror. This art piece is by far my favorite piece and if I could, I would show it to everyone so they could see how amazing of an artist Cassandra is.

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Halloween Decorations

This past weekend every hall in each building was decorated for Halloween. I went through different buildings to see what everyone had done to decorate and I was very impressed with everyone’s ideas. The first floor of Founders Hall was probably the best. I would never think of them as artistic but they pulled through by making a haunted house in their hallway. They made a cave and they completely turned off the lights in the hallway. The first thought I had when I first saw it was that it was a really cool idea. They made a cave out of limited resources and created the best hallway for the decoration contest. Aside from the cool decorations, they made a complete maze out of their hallways. Like I said before, they had limited resources to use but they still managed to make a maze within the cave. When the lights were on, I thought the cave looked even cooler. Everything seemed perfectly symmetrical and the maze was truly confusing. I never would have thought of the boys being able to put together the best decorated hallway.
My second favorite decorated hallway was the girls’ floor. I thought their ideas were cute because they had put up blue paper on all of the lights to make the inside look like a night scene. They also made their own little bats out of brown paper and they hung off the ceiling. A lot of the girls on the floor are artists and I thought their ideas were great. They also hung up red pieces of paper that hung off the walls and they also created some sort of a maze throughout the hallway. When the kids came to the halls, they were very excited about the mazes.
All of the decorations that I saw made me think of how everyone came together to create cool haunted hallways for the little kids who were coming to trick or treat. I don’t know who won the hallways decoration contest but I thought all of the ideas were pretty cool. Everyone worked together to make the scariest hallways they could create. Some people were actual artists and others were just there to help but I thought it was amazing how people contributed and put together all of their artistic skills. I don’t think I would be able to help in the hallway decorating contest just because I am not very artistic when it comes to little resources and Halloween decorations. But all in all, the weekend turned out successful for the little kids and I loved the decorations.

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