An Eye Catching Moment

On Friday, the 9th of November, Joan Fabian, who is a visual and graphic artist, came and spoke to our Humanities class about her works. She truly believes that art is trying to make you think differently, and each and every person, deep down has their own opinions that are unusual. Art is obviously very important to her and she says that each person is unique, meaning that no other person can be like another, so therefore no one has their experience and it won’t ever come again. She enjoys meditating, which is a time when you are cleansing the mind, having a moment with God, and it allows her to gain acceptance with images that suddenly come to her mind. Shapes are used as a means to her vocabulary, and she is interested in what they convey to both her and the viewer. Many titles, convey her humor, reaction, and overall, how she feels when she is totally through with a picture, from beginning to end. She feels that when you are building something up, it’s more like a relationship and she has to feel good about the picture and feel very confident because millions and millions of people throughout the world can look at her art work. When staring at fabrics, she can picture thousands and thousands of different images and can totally look at things differently from other people and see new things. She totally believes that artists are political and more aware, and she said she always has to share and read between the lines. Also, in education, you approach new people with new ideas.

Joan, also told a very interesting story about a young man, where his dad had taken him to the Dallas Museum of Art, so that he could learn how to appreciate. Seven years ago, she had visited Pakistan and she had said that absolutely everything is different over there. For example, here we drink iced tea; instead, in Pakistan they always drink hot tea. While staying there, she had to be driven around by a driver, because the traffic along with the animals being in the road ways was extremely bad. She was in Pakistan for a total of six months, and while she was there, her husband came and stayed with her for one month, just so he knew what she was going through and how different the world was. She then came back in 2000 and it’s inspired her and now she looks at things completely different.

Her story was a complete attention getter, because of the fact that you don't find many people very often that are willing to get up and leave their family and friends just to go and visit a different country. I found her speech to be very eye catching, because I have never had the chance to sit in class and listen to an individual talk about having the chance to go and teach in another in Pakistan for six months. Another reason was because her pictures were very fascinating, along with the way she expressed her feelings about art in general.