Artist Lecture 1 - Penelope Umbrico

I liked the aesthetic of a lot of her work, the use of repeating, slightly differing images is interesting to me, it's simple, but its scale makes it complex. I also liked her mirror works, but I would never have gotten that they were about the feeling of absence of yourself. Once my bathroom mirror broke and for a long time there was no mirror there, but I didn't feel the same way as she described it, like I was missing. Maybe it has something to do with vanity or something, not knowing what you look like, but who cares? You probably look the same as you did the day or month before, unless you put on your face every day; it was really only a problem when I had to shave. Anyway, I've always thought that the intended meaning of a piece isn't that important. I just found it to be a funny illusion of a mirror that doesn't reflect. She was a little difficult to follow at first, which was kind of annoying, but she seemed to get it together as the lecture progressed. My favorite of her work is the broken LCD screen color fields. Again, I don't think it's important that they are supposed to be about the art being created out of the failure of entertainment or whatever she said, I want to appreciate it for the simplicity of it's ambiguous appeal. I'm amazed at the fact that something totally abstract like that can be interesting by it's own visual merit. A random malfunction can create something that can stand as a piece of art, I don't know, I'm kind of confusing myself.