Who is this artist, and What do you like in art as a Strategist?
Elena Blagoslavova (@ElenaBlagos) is an artist who knows, what copper art is, how a sketchbook can be marbled, how to duct-tape a copper banana etc. You can buy her artworks as well as copper jewelry through her Etsy store.
How I help to sell handcrafted jewelry online?
As a designer, SEO strategist my goal is help with marketing and advertising partners research, and later help her with sales on Etsy.
““As for me, I, myself, have an Artistic background. It’s interesting for me how differently people look at the watercolor technique “”
Elena is an artist, Member of the TSHR, Participant of Russian and international exhibitions, biennale of contemporary art. Her works are held in private collections both in Russia and abroad.
based on the Creative artwork of artist Elena
Her first specialty is a robotics engineer, the second education is the Physics and Mathematics Faculty of the Pedagogical University.
Elena has been engaged in creativity since 2012. Before entering the course "Contemporary Art" at the British Higher School of Art and Design (BHSAD), she received her art education privately, studying in the studios of artists.
Since 2018 - a member of the Young Russian Artists (YRA!)
What is her Art about?
The artist practices both traditional and alternative painting techniques (Ebru, Reng-i-Su), handmade watercolor, electroplating. In her paintings, she uses both traditional and mixed techniques, aquatone printing, photography, collage. In her installations, she is attracted by substances and materials that can change their state under the influence of the environment and humans, for example, resin, plastic. She also uses organic material in her works - freeze-dried plants, insects, amphibians - bees, spiders, snakes, etc.
“As I remember I ask Elena “how do you design ebru art?” And she told me a story about:
”
In our modern tense world, in order to stop the flow of negative thoughts, you need to feel the energy of the material, for example copper or water, disconnect from your experiences, adjust your state to the sensations of the present moment. And then you get the best watercolor sketchbook or copper artwork.
Why?
Every time I am surprised to discover watercolor painting for myself, as do those who first get acquainted with this amazing technique. After all, water is an unpredictable substance. It is a universal solvent and the base of all my substances that I work with. It is sensitive to mood and it gives me special joy to observe magical images arising in joint work. To be in the moment and to be in discovery again and again is of great value to me.
For me, creativity is not just a process of creating a piece of art - it is a thought, an experience, reflected in the dance of colors on water or in the form of pure copper jewelry.
Where
In my artistic practice, I often refer to the theme of the emergence of a person's "mental boundaries", that is, beliefs and attitudes, based on which we live our lives and build relationships and which form the boundaries of social consciousness. We all live in a society limited by the framework of habits and rules, but each of us has an area of freedom and development, which I try to reveal in my works.
The purpose of my communication with the viewer is to call to think in the context of survival, about the attitude to my inner self. Incentive to the idea that an ecological attitude towards our planet begins with constructive states of parent-child, adult-adult.
The artist is of the view that the basis for human survival is compromise, which conflicts with our ego's desire to be right.
The modern context of our reality with the help of the media space forms the collective unconscious, from which, as from a saturated solution, the individual absorbs the official points of view. As a result, we get an average social "product", accustomed to think according to someone else's template.
When?
In 2019, to an exhibition at the Winzavod Center for Contemporary Art, Elena Blagos for the first time in the history of art brought cheese to the gallery as an art object. Challenging the boundaries of the usual understanding of art, the artist created the process of forming her own righteousness from scratch. As a medium for cheese ripening, media content was used, which, according to the author, prevents compromise and causes conflicts in our society. Thus, the artist urged the audience to think about the fact that the righteousness that is broadcast from TV screens and Internet channels does not contribute to coexistence, but leads to separation and the emergence of boundaries.
How is righteousness born?
Luc Reinhard said: "The mind always seeks agreement and avoids disagreement, always wants to be right and avoids being wrong, wants to dominate and avoid dependence, wants self-justification and avoids criticism."
When a person is born, he has 100% of the possibilities in life. He is the whole universe. He can become a great artist and musician, ballerina and astronaut. Anyone in this life. But getting to this planet, to this country, city, district, school, family, a person is inevitably exposed to the environment, gradually mastering the rules of survival in this world.
Gradually, they impose on us the point of view that dolls for boys are wrong, pistols for girls are also wrong, eating a watermelon with bread is wrong, standing out is wrong, being invisible is wrong, arguing with adults is wrong, being homosexual is wrong, being personal a diary is wrong, not being able to defend your point of view is also wrong. As we grow up, we continue to be exposed to different righteousness from the external environment.
Any "wrong" means that somewhere out there is someone who is always right. Who is it? And why is he right?
t turns out that we exist in a coordinate system of various standards, criteria: rightness, beauty, evaluation, etc. ?
Is coexistence a compromise with oneself or with others? How to measure the degree of compromise and in what units: 50/50, 100/0?
When you find yourself in a community of people that is new to you, then for some time you seem to be looking out the window, clearly noticing thoughts alien to you, then the boundaries of the window dissolve, and you inevitably become a part of this context. It penetrates you, transforms your consciousness, polishing, subduing and aligning. You put on a mask to match ...
For me, thinking about a compromise is the realization through my practice of ways of interacting with the outside world. The desire to find something that is not yet in an empty chest filled with everything. An empty shell of extracted meanings. The artist is always on the edge. Meet environmental standards or follow your beliefs? The question of choice is here and now. It’s either this or that.
Either you construct your own reality through your past conclusions, or you fill it with new meanings. Coexistence for me is the art of being wrong.
WHat about the choice of material, technology?
I do not limit my mediums as such. However, not being a visual masochist, I make a certain distinction between certain representations of the harmony of color, light, and form that seem appropriate to me. I am not inclined to hanging pieces of meat (although Chaim Soutine and Lucien Freud are some of my favorite artists), intestines sticking out of the abdomen, dismemberment, used condoms, etc. anything that can cause nausea and physical discomfort. I prefer statements without such naturalistic details. If it's dicks and meat, then it should be picturesque. Probably, like a child, I have a feeling of “forbidden fruit”, which, although you look with trepidation, you are in no hurry to acquire yourself, although you have a desire.
In your famous cheese project 1, how did you observe your priorities at any given time?
The main answer that I wanted to get is how can I visualize the boundaries of my innocence based on my ideas about them? "Can I give up my righteousness and for what?" Visually, I wanted to reflect, on the one hand, the desire for the inner comfort of the usual human framework, compliance with the standards of imaginary boundaries through the triangle of my Ego:
I am my body - manifestations - "don't take risks, it hurts"
I am my feelings - manifestation - "Look good, I am delighted, I am scared, how do I look?"
I am my thoughts - manifestation - "This is awful, You are wrong, I know, look right, I will show you now, this is nonsense, I know better, you are doing wrong, this is wrong, why are you doing this, this is abnormal" ...
And on the other hand, to raise the question of the limits of the compromise: Everyone wants to think that their point of view is the only correct one, but it is just one of 7, 6 billion. And every second three, or even five, new universes of righteousness are born on earth.
The boundaries of art - intuition or rational comprehension? Maybe, really, just intuition is enough?
Intuition can suggest anything, and a person can believe that the Cosmic Mind or even God is talking to him.
For me, thinking about compromise is the desire to go beyond the concept of normal "correct" art, including in its meaning the ways of absurd interactions and mutual influences. The desire to find something that is not yet in an empty chest filled with everything. Such is the empty shell of the extracted meanings.
Is coexistence a compromise with oneself or with others?
In 1965, Kassas, Girgis, gave a definition of the concept that I used in my work on the rightness of “geocenosis ..., there is an aggregate on a certain extent of the earth surfaces of homogeneous natural phenomena (atmosphere, rocks, soil and hydrological conditions, vegetation, fauna and the world microorganisms), which has its own specific interactions of these constituent components and a certain type of exchange of matter and their energy between themselves and other natural phenomena, representing an internally contradictory dialectical unity, in constant motion, development " 2
Having come to a compromise, do you keep yourself?
The one who has power over the means and methods of influence is right. The state on the brains of a person, like me - on cheese. Both brains and cheese are products in a figurative and literal sense. Just as the state believes that it is right to influence the masses of our minds, having quite, so to speak, pseudoscientific theories about what our society needs and where to lead it, so I, in particular, having power over my own actions, I choose a way of influencing the cheese, as it seems to me personally, possessing intelligence in the form of microorganisms. Nobody has yet proven that bacteria do not think in common. There is a point of view that we exist as a substrate for the life of microorganisms, imagining ourselves to be right about who is in charge in the geocenosis. Now we all see that our righteousness has failed somewhere, and the world of microorganisms has upset the balance that has developed over many centuries. Whose righteousness will be stronger? Wait and see.
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1. reference
8 loaves of cheese, cooked specifically for this, matured for 2 months in 4 refrigerators on podiums, in front of monitors on which 3 content was played. Recording of a political talk show, a religious channel, LGBT content. Headphones and a monitor were connected to each loaf of cheese. One batch of control. All the time the cheese was ripening, it “listened” and “watched” information. At the end of the exhibition, a performance took place. The invited experts and spectators tasted the taste of the cheeses.
Meanings: whole cheese, broken, a head of cheese, like the head of a person, confirmation of the truth or refutation of an experiment. Survival is nutrition. In order to survive, you need to break the integrity. Questions: Is coexistence a compromise with oneself or with others? Is it correct to have your own point of view or can you rely on the external environment? Where are the boundaries of the rightness of coexistence?
