(Insert Awesome Concept Art Here)

Posted on by under Exhibitions, Humanities, School

Hello, Internet.

So, we just finished school for the year. That means we all survived exam season, TPoLs, and, of course, another PLP exhibition.

This year, our exhibition centred around an interesting synthesis of two themes: concept art, and the Vietnam War.

First, we learned about concept art. We started out by looking at some examples, some of which felt more like art than others. We even took a field trip to the Vancouver Art Gallery to see some examples in real life.

(Above: me interacting with some concept art)

What we learned about concept art was this: the medium of the art is little more than a means of communication for the idea, or concept, which is the more important thing. The concept could be anything, as long as the artist felt strongly enough to create art around it.

As I’m sure you’ve guessed by this point, our assignment was to create concept art about concepts related to the Vietnam War. More specifically, we looked at ethical judgements related to the war– either from a historical perspective, or from a modern perspective looking back.

In order to do this, we had to do a fair amount of research on the Vietnam War. We spent a few weeks studying some key themes such as why people went to war, how the war was fought, and what things were like in America during the war. Purely coincidentally, I ended up watching The Killing Fields and the second half of Apocalypse Now in two other classes while we were studying the Vietnam War. Although The Killing Fields is more about the Cambodian Civil War, both movies do portray events that were part of the Vietnam War, and it was interesting to see how the war was portrayed in entertainment-based media in the 70s.

Once we had done some research, we each decided what concept we wanted to present in our art. This was my artist’s statement explaining the concept behind my work:

Matchbox ‘55 (Candles and matches) – Willa Bisanz When we started researching the Vietnam War, one of the things we looked at was footage of Vietnam veterans talking about why they served in Vietnam. For some of them, they had no choice, or they were in a situation where it was difficult to get a job and were just taking whatever options they could. However, one thing that caught my attention was that a few of the soldiers mentioned wanting to be heroes for their country, or believing that the government would do them no wrong. This was also a concept that came up frequently in previous years when we studied the world wars– people went to war out of heroism or patriotism or trust in their government and their country. The idea, to me, seemed naive. However, the more I learned about the Vietnam War, the more I realized that it was only during that war that many people were able to learn just how naive it was. With the release of the Pentagon Papers revealing that the government had been lying to the public and getting themselves further entrenched in a war they didn’t believe they could win, the televised media footage of the war giving people more of an understanding of just how bad things were, and Vietnam War protesters rallying against American involvement in the war, and the patriotism and blind faith in the government began to fall apart. The concept of “American Exceptionalism”, or the belief in America’s superiority to other countries, was certainly taken down a notch– but it still lingers a little today. The candles in the middle of my art piece represent these ideas– American Exceptionalism, trusting the government and military blindly, wanting to be a hero for your country with little or no reference for what exactly was going to happen to you. As more and more inciting events happen, the candles burn down more, the trust and patriotism melting away under the fire of America’s mistakes. The matches around represent these events– things that happened during the Vietnam War, and examples of how today shades of American Exceptionalism are still around, and with it, the naivety of blind trust.

Essentially, my project used candles and matches to represent how different incidents within the Vietnam War led to the American public’s trust in their government and military melting away and being destroyed over time.

Speaking to people at the exhibition who actually remembered living through the events of the Vietnam War was very interesting, because they had a very good understanding of the historical side of the art, and were able to give really interesting insights into the concepts.

All in all, this was a fun project, and I enjoyed getting to light a bunch of candles in such a manner that pretty much everyone under the age of twenty who I spoke to asked if I was trying to summon a demon. However, I think concept art is effective only in the delivery of certain concepts, and that while it worked well for this project, it’s not a format I would want to use for projects regularly.

Toodles.

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