Blog #4: In Class Critique

My Artist Statement, currently at least, is basically all of my content down on paper. I tried hard to get all my thoughts and feelings (even beliefs) down, and I believe I succeeded in that matter, but now all I need to do is revise, organize, rewrite, and things of that matter.

My in class reviewer picked up on that, and understood that as a first draft it had content, but not organized or clean in any matter. He basically told me that I should include some quotes, and talk about some specifics, but other than that I just need to edit.

My major goals for my artist statement are for people to look at my photo, then look at my statement and have all of their questions answered, but also give them some background information. I want them to understand the background of my photo, I want them to understand why and how, and who my icon is/was, and who he is/was.

(Draft 2)

Cinema has always been a medium of self expression that has always caught my eye. It's been a love of mine for so many years that it's difficult to remember the beginnings of this hobby of mine. Thinking back, I still remember standing in the hall of my middle school, where it all begin. I still remember that little 13 year-old middle school kid staring out the wide window, waiting for summer. I still remember my schedule, boring, hot, pointless. I still remember my feeling, standing there, that kid was me. It was one of the last days of school, even though the days resembled that of a sunny summer day. My brother’s friend, Hunter, came down from high school. Summer wasn’t over for him either, but he had the time. He saw me staring out the window and thought it would cheer my day up if he stopped by and said hello. It did. He had been attending the school High Tech High Media Arts, so naturally I asked him how the movie making was going. He said it was going well, to my surprise, I had no idea. Two hours later I was at my house, quickly jotting down ideas for films, somehow he had inspired me to get into filmmaking, without me knowing.

I’ve never considered myself follower of one, therefore it has always been difficult for me to idolize someone. But when I stopped looking for one, my greatest idol appeared before my mind. It wasn’t Barack Obama, it wasn’t John Lennon, and it wasn’t Al Gore. No, it was that kid who talked to me in middle school, and he wasn’t a celebrity. He is a personal inspiration; it was that high school kid, that friend of my brothers, that friend of mine, Hunter Moskowitz. He helped me through many hardships during my life, and steered me in the right path so many times. But there was more than a sense of wisdom that made me idolize him so.

Almost everything about him was, and is, a constant source of inspiration to me. Everything, even down to the way he dealt with people; it was all his own way. And I’m not even talking about his filmmaking skills, which were at a level that an 18-year old high school student usually doesn’t attain, but it was his opinion of things, his way of expressing himself in all mediums of art. Still, his filmmaking abilities inspired much of the last 4 years of my life.

His films, even his filmmaking style, are still constant sources of inspiration to me. He would constantly call me up and tell me about something he had thought up of, something of which myself or anyone else would never come up with. But even past the ideas, past the amazingly odd stories and scripts, he was even good at executing them in the line of production. He would make short films, which housed such ideas so funny, so sad, or sad happy, things so out there that they would make you think, no matter what they were, and no matter who you are. Even his finished films are so out there they let you to crawl into his mind for a second; they allow you to see what he was thinking. The amazing thing about him was that he was able to do all of this without loosing any artistic qualities by making his films into artsy pieces of trash. And in many respects, he was immortalized inside his own films.

You may be asking yourself why this is important, why you care, why you are reading this. I can't exactly tell you why, but I can tell you what I consider important. And what I consider important in all this is how important all this is, to me at least. The difference between me and most people’s Icons or American Icons is that I’ve met mine, got to know him, and my icon changed my life. That is what’s important. My only true American Icon or American Idol or American influence, was a personal inspiration, it was that high school kid, that friend of my brothers, that friend of mine, Hunter Moskowitz. Even though Hunter passed away last June, to me, he’ll always be that high school kid who changed my life.